Artist Sebastiano Del Piombo focus of major retrospective - Rome is set to celebrate the life and works of the neglected Renaissance artist Sebastiano Del Piombo, with a sweeping new exhibition opening next week. Featuring some 80 masterpieces and dozens of drawings, the event is the first major Italian retrospective of Del Piombo (1485-1547), a contemporary and colleague of Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian among others. Somewhat overlooked in modern times, Del Piombo was a hit in his own day, producing work for a range of important clients, including Pope Clement VII.
The exhibition seeks to restore Del Piombo to his rightful place in the 16th-century firmament of artistic stars, carrying visitors through the developments of his career: from the brilliant colours of his early years, to the monumental forms of his maturity and onto the darker tones of his final works. Born Sebastiano Luciani, Del Piombo was a successful lute player as a young man but switched his focus to art in his early 20s. He studied first under Giovanni Bellini and later with Giorgione, where he developed the love of colour typical of the Venetian school. He moved to Rome in 1511 where he became friends with Michelangelo, who reportedly helped him with the preparatory sketches for some of his masterpieces. Two paintings in the exhibit that are normally kept in Viterbo near Rome, a Pieta and a Flagellation, bear clear signs of Michelangelo's influence, art historians say.
However, Del Piombo also had his own distinct style, which emerges most clearly in his popular, life-sized portraits. The exhibit offers a range of paintings from around the world. Among these is The Holy Family with Saints from the Metropolitan Museum of New York, whose rich, warm colours indicate it was one of Del Piombo's earliest pieces. Portrait of Dorotea, on loan from Berlin, shows an enigmatic woman against a dark background. From the Cathedral of Burgos in Spain comes an altarpiece featuring the Holy Family in the countryside, while the Prado in Madrid has loaned its bleak Christ Carrying the Cross. The exhibition also features a number of Del Piombo's acclaimed portraits. From his earliest period in Rome is a portrait of Cardinal Ferry Carondelet and his Secretary, followed by a 1520 piece entitled Portrait of a Humanist.
Other works include a large Man In Arms, and - unusually for Del Piombo who favoured full-scale portraits - a Young, Bearded Man in miniature.
However, his most famous client was Pope Clement VII, one of the Medici popes.
The exhibit features two of his portraits on loan from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, each offering a different vision of the pontiff. An earlier work shows him clean-shaven and vital, prior to the 1527 sack of Rome. A later, better-known painting depicts him sitting in his study, with the full beard he grew - in violation of Catholic canon law - as a sign of mourning for the city's destruction. The exhibit features most of Del Piombo's surviving works, with the exception of a few crucial pieces, such as his Raising of Lazarus in London's National Gallery, which cannot be moved. The show opens in Rome's Palazzo Venezia on February 7 and closes May 18. It then transfers to the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, which helped organize the exhibit, where it runs from June 28 until September 28.
