""His masters were Bellini and Giorgione, his rivals Michelangelo and Raphael. As you can see, he managed to combine the power of the former and the gentleness of the latter." This is how Vladimir Nabokov expressed his appreciation for Sebastiano del Piombo (ca. 1485-1547) in one of his short stories. During his career, this Renaissance painter developed a powerful, vividly colored style. He also devised a technique of painting in oil on stone, which Michelangelo apparently sneered at as being fit only for use by "women and lazybones like Sebastiano." Because of this criticism, Sebastiano del Piombo was unjustly disregarded for centuries. Kia Vahland amends this view in her lively account of the life and work of this unusual painter."--BOOK JACKET.
A complete account of the complex career of this Venetian painter focusing on the crucial moments of the development of his expressive style, which was surprisingly ahead of its time. The volume contains reproductions of forty-five paintings and forty d
Sebastiano del Piombo (c.1485-1547) was a close associate and rival of the central artistic figures of the High Renaissance, notably Michelangelo and Raphael. After the death of Raphael and the departure of Michelangelo from Rome, Sebastiano became the dominant artistic personality in the city. Despite being one of most significant artistic figures of the period, he remains the last artist of major importance in the western canon about whom no recent work has been published in English. In this study, Piers Baker-Bates approaches Sebastiano?s career through analysis of the patrons he attracted following his arrival at Rome. The first half of the book concentrates on Sebastiano?s network of patrons, predominantly Italian, who had strong factional ties to the Imperial camp; the second half discusses Sebastiano?s relationship with his principal Spanish patrons. Sebastiano is a leading example of a transcultural artist in the sixteenth century and his relationship with Spain was fundamental to the development of his careerThe author investigates the domination of Sebastiano?s career by patrons who had geographically different origins, but who were all were members of a wider network of Imperial loyalties. Thus Baker-Bates removes Sebastiano from the shadow of his contemporaries, bringing him to life for the reader as an artistic personality in his own right. Baker-Bates? characterization of the Rome in which Sebastiano made his career differs from previous scholarly accounts, and he describes how Sebastiano was ideally suited to flourish in the environment he depicts.Sebastiano del Piombo and the World of Spanish Rome thus re-appraises not only Sebastiano?s place in the canon of Renaissance art but, using him as a lens, also the cultural worlds of Early Modern Italy and Spain in which he operated.
Almost Eternal: Painting on Stone and Material Innovation in Early Modern Europe gathers together an international group of ten scholars, who offer a novel account of the phenomenon of oil painting on stone surfaces in Northern and Southern Europe. This technique was devised in Rome by Sebastiano del Piombo in the early sixteenth century and was practiced until the late seventeenth century. This phenomenon has attracted little attention previously: the volume therefore makes a significant and timely contribution to the field in the light of recent studies of materiality and the rise of technical Art History. Contributors: Nadia Baadj, Piers Baker-Bates, Elena Calvillo, Ana Gonsalez Mozo, Anna Kim, Helen Langdon, Johanna Beate Lohff, Judith Mann, Christopher Nygren, Suzanne Wegmann, and Giulia Martina Weston.
Presents a survey of sixty Venetian Renaissance paintings of the calibre of Bellini and Titian's "Feast of the Gods" in Washington and Giorgione's "Laura and Three Philosophers" in Vienna.
Consummate painter, draftsman, sculptor, and architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was celebrated for his disegno, a term that embraces both drawing and conceptual design, which was considered in the Renaissance to be the foundation of all artistic disciplines. To his contemporary Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was “the divine draftsman and designer” whose work embodied the unity of the arts. Beautifully illustrated with more than 350 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and architectural views, this book establishes the centrality of disegno to Michelangelo’s work. Carmen C. Bambach presents a comprehensive and engaging narrative of the artist’s long career in Florence and Rome, beginning with his training under the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and the sculptor Bertoldo and ending with his seventeen-year appointment as chief architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. The chapters relate Michelangelo’s compositional drawings, sketches, life studies, and full-scale cartoons to his major commissions—such as the ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, the church of San Lorenzo and its New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) in Florence, and Saint Peter’s—offering fresh insights into his creative process. Also explored are Michelangelo’s influential role as a master and teacher of disegno, his literary and spiritual interests, and the virtuoso drawings he made as gifts for intimate friends, such as the nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna, the marchesa of Pescara. Complementing Bambach’s text are thematic essays by leading authorities on the art of Michelangelo. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and richly illustrated, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of this timeless artist.
This important and innovative book examines artists' mobility as a critical aspect of Italian Renaissance art. It is well known that many eminent artists such as Cimabue, Giotto, Donatello, Lotto, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian traveled. This book is the first to consider the sixteenth-century literary descriptions of their journeys in relation to the larger Renaissance discourse concerning mobility, geography, the act of creation, and selfhood. David Young Kim carefully explores relevant themes in Giorgio Vasari's monumental Lives of the Artists, in particular how style was understood to register an artist's encounter with place. Through new readings of critical ideas, long-standing regional prejudices, and entire biographies, The Traveling Artist in the Italian Renaissance provides a groundbreaking case for the significance of mobility in the interpretation of art and the wider discipline of art history.
In Tracing the Visual Language of Raphael’s Circle to 1527, Alexis Culotta examines how the Renaissance master’s style – one infused with borrowed visual quotations from other artists both past and present – proved influential in his relationship with associate Baldassare Peruzzi and in the development of the artists within his thriving workshop. Shedding new light on the important, yet often-overshadowed, figures within this network, this book calls upon key case studies to convincingly illustrate how this visual language and its recombination evolved during Raphael’s Roman career and subsequently served as a springboard for artistic innovation for these close associates as they collaborated in the years following Raphael’s death.
