Sebastiano del Piombo, (1485-1547) at Palazzo Venezia by Lois Gregory
Date: 13/03/2008
|
A visit to the current exhibition, Sebastiano del Piombo, (1485-1547) at Palazzo Venezia (from 8 February – 18 May 2008) offers, like many other aspects of travel, an experience of cultural difference. It is not just the art that is Italian, the mode of presenting it is too. While museum-goers in the US are accustomed to focus more on the story depicted in the painting, their Italian counterparts (by virtue of longer familiarity with the arts) concentrate on the manner in which it is told. Aspects of style and questions of form prevail over those of content. Very frequently, as in the exhibition at hand, the curators strive to situate, or re-situate an artist within one of the society's most highly valued cultural and aesthetic moments, the Renaissance.
In the review that follows, I have wanted to give the reader some insight into the exhibition and the art, but also into the language and the type of discussion in which such a show circulates.
Rome of the High Renaissance was the Rome of powerful popes and cardinals whose ambitions—at least as worldly as spiritual—led them to become great patrons of the arts. Michelangelo and Raphael flourished in this environment, creating their most celebrated works in the employ of Popes Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III.
This Rome was also the Rome of Sebastiano del Piombo. Though hardly as familiar a figure as the others, Sebastiano, as presented by the exhibition, deserves to be remembered among the masters. His artistic development was significant in itself, but his career was also closely linked to his more famous peers.
Just after Botticelli, Perugino, Pinturicchio, and others had finished painting Sixtus IV's chapel (the Sistine Chapel), Sebastiano Luciano (called Sebastiano del Piombo) was born in Venice, in 1485. His early years were spent in that city, where he was apprenticed to Bellini, and later learned from Giorgione. This Venetian phase of his career is displayed in the first room of the exhibition. It primarily contains portraits. Giorgione's influence is emphasized with the dreamy sensuousness of none-too-dainty figures who emerge or partly emerge from moody and dusky grounds. Sebastiano uses the stereotypical warm and tonal colors of the Venetians (think of Titian, for example) and he defines his figures almost entirely with color, light, and shade rather than by line. When Sebastiano is most like Giorgione, the surface itself seems a bit murky, presenting an image with very soft edges.
Among these portraits a few of represent saints, painted as if they were portraits. The museum considers the Portraits of San Bartolomeo and San Sebastiano, c. 1510-11 (hanging together as a diptych) to be the highpoint of the painter's Venetian years. I find, however, that his Portrait of Ludovico da Tolosa, c. 1510-11, to be the most interesting in this first room. Like the others it is a monumental full-length image of the saint set in an architectural ground that is beautifully somber with heavy Renaissance proportions. Ludovico, though, does not just pose against a stagey backdrop, but by means of Sebastiano's handling of light (as well as his placement of the figure) the half-round niche envelopes the figure who subtly defies traditional spatial barriers by stepping ever so slightly beyond his shell, letting a beam of light illuminate the drapery over the advancing leg. This implication of movement is all the more engaging because the architecture is so resolutely still. If we see any Bellini influence, we see it in this tranquil geometric volume, and we see it in the refined and finished surface of the saint's patterned robe.
The rest of the room has some lovely portraits, many of idealized young women. If seen singly they are captivating enough, very elegant and refined. All together in this room, though, they betray repetition. There is a limited range of expression, pose, and facial type. One also has the suspicion that, save for the well-done drapery and naturalistic textures, Sebastiano's strong point was not the body beneath. The suspicion carries over to the large Judgment of Solomon, 1506-09. Considered the most ambitious undertaking of Sebastiano's career in Venice, it is indeed a very large-scale figural composition (what is often called a history painting). The numerous reworkings of the figures are visible on this never-finished piece. We can see many pentimenti, or traces of elements subsequently reworked.
Before continuing into the rooms of Sebastiano's Roman career, the gallery itself deserves mention. The exhibition is hung in the vast halls of the piano nobile (the main floor with the princely apartments) of Palazzo Venezia, begun c. 1455 for the cardinal who later became Pope Paul II. Sebastiano's paintings are given an environment, however, that virtually erases the presence of the Palazzo and its grand spaces. They hand on dark velvet-covered temporary display walls, or baffles, arranged around the perimeter of each room. It is a decidedly obvious attempt at dramatic display, as we view the paintings as if at the back of a deep window, with the room lights very low. Thus the environment is empty and dark with only the paintings appearing to glow from out of their deep recesses. The only other illumination in the room comes from the strongly colored light projected diffusely toward the ceiling from about 20 feet over our heads. In one room this light is lime green, in another red, and so on, but the rooms are very definitely dark. We thus wander a bit uncertainly, disconnected from any tangible space the moment we stray from any of the pictures. The design might easily be considered an example of museum display that presents art as a mystical experience.
Back to Sebastiano and his Roman work. Sebastiano left Venice for Rome in 1511 on the invitation of Agostino Chigi, wealthy Roman banker, Treasurer of the Curia, and patron of the arts. Under the auspices of Agostino, Sebastiano came immediately into contact with Raphael, then working in Agostino's villa (now called Villa Farnesina). The relationship between these two young and cultivated artists has always been described as jealous and competitive. Michelangelo, Sebastiano's other early Roman contact, became, by contrast, a kind of mentor to the Venetian.
The influence of both the rival and the mentor is evident in Sebastiano's Roman painting. For example, the Portrait of Cardinal Ferry Carondolet and Two Secretaries, c. 1511-12, was long attributed to Raphael and we can notice that the clarity of form, sharpness of outline, and the principle head itself are all Raphaelesque.
The guidance of Michelangelo is evident (and indeed it is know that the master did lend a hand to Sebastiano's conceptions and even his drawing) in such powerful figural works as The Flagellation, c. 1525, and Christ in Limbo, c. 1516. The dynamic torsion of the muscular bodies and the bold compositions show this.
There are also numerous portraits that seem to me to show, more than anything, Sebastiano's own style. Though always tending a bit toward artificial elegance, with some odd lapses in solidity and ungainly bulkiness of the body in relation to the head, they frequently achieve a vivid expressiveness as he matured. This is particularly true for the male subjects. The Man in Armor and the Portrait of a Man, both c. 1515, and the Portrait of a Lady (Vittoria Colonna as Artemesia ?), c. 1530 are examples of his achievement, and of what I believe represents Michelangelo's influence left out, as well as put in. In other words, Sebastiano at his best gives us his Venetian tonality and hazy forms along with the stronger plastic sense he learned in Rome. He gives us soft volumes that fade into space, but with certain areas of hard finish.
There is a very nice comparison that we can make in the ''blue room,'' a room designed to show the spiritual direction of Sebastiano's art after the Sack of Rome in 1527. Never mind that the majority of the paintings pre-date this event, there are two wonderful examples of a theme he repeated throughout his life. Called Christ on the Way to Cavalry, c. 1513 and Christ Carrying the Cross, c. 1540-45, these two images demonstrate a reworking of his own painting. There are just two examples here, but Sebastiano painted this theme many times. As such it offers insight into those aspects of his art that he himself sought to emphasize.
In both, the face of Jesus has that tense expressiveness of his best Roman work, where the bold movement of the head combines with the shadowy character of the large volumes and the linearity of the smaller ones. In the earlier version the composition includes other figures and shows his indebtedness to Michelangelo in the treatment of the massive body powerfully moving through space. In the later version, Sebastiano refined his own interests, which appear to be less about spatial solidity and more about expressive pattern and line. In this 1545 picture the facial features of Jesus, while strikingly similar to those of the earlier painting, have greater linear definition and more angularity. The angle of the now very sharply marked cross and the axis of Jesus' face are carefully brought into near parallel relation with one another—the visual impact of which is immediate. The difference in the hands between the two versions is one of the most striking points of comparison. Naturalistic and heavy in the first painting, the fingers in the second become a focus for Sebastiano's tense, exaggerated lines. They are at once impossibly elegant and ill suited to their task, yet powerful for their wiry energy.
In the end, this is the impression that remains most vivid for me—highly refined, improbably graceful, beautifully colored, un-naturalistic and as a result, they are successful expressive paintings.
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
