Technical Experimentation in the Art of Sebastiano Del Piombo*

Technical Experimentation: the Art of Sebastiano del Piombo 47

Chapter 1 Technical Experimentation: the Art of Sebastiano del Piombo ‘Uno Nuovo Modo di Colorire in Pietra’: Technical Experimentation in the Art of Sebastiano del Piombo*

Piers Baker-Bates

The phrase, ‘a new mode of colouring in stone,’ cited in this essay’s title comes from the well-known letter written by Vittore Soranzo in June 1530 concern- ing that unspecified ‘imagine di Christo’ that Sebastiano del Piombo had presented to Pope Clement VII.1 As discussed in the Introduction, this letter is the earliest surviving reference to this method of painting by Sebastiano and is also important as it describes not only the method itself but refers to Sebastiano’s reasons for adopting it. Nonetheless our knowledge of technical developments in Sebastiano’s art, and of their importance, remains limited, despite new research on Sebastiano’s work on stone that has resulted from recent restorations. Given the state of the question, what I will discuss in what follows represents a preliminary introduction. I have also written more broadly recently about Sebastiano’s artistic practice and its innovative nature, so what I shall do here in the context of this volume is to focus on his paintings on stone specifi- cally.2 Chris Nygren has written recently about Titian’s turn to stone and what he terms “the first generation of painted stones.”3 This chapter seeks to anchor Sebastiano del Piombo’s practice in current debates around materiality, espe cially material religion. What follows will analyse the reasons behind Sebastiano

* I would like to thank Elena Calvillo for the original idea for this collection, for inviting me to be her co-editor and for encouraging me to think about Sebastiano’s materiality more deeply in what follows. I would also like to thank Dorigen Caldwell for inviting me to present an earlier version of this research and Paul Joannides for his, as always, insightful comments throughout. 1 Delle Lettere da diversi Re et Principi et Cardinali et altri huomini dotti a Mons. Pietro Bembo scritte (Venice, 1560), p. 110. 2 Piers Baker-Bates, “A Painting little less than Eternal,” in Michelangelo & Sebastiano, ed. Matthias Wivel (London, 2017), pp. 74-85. 3 Christopher J. Nygren, “Titian’s Ecce Homo on Slate: Stone, Oil and the Transubstantiation of Painting,” Art Bulletin 99, no. 1 (2017), 36-66.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004361492_004 48 Baker-bates using such stone surfaces, in terms of their performative roles, of their aes- thetic value, and of their religious dimension.4 For example, although the conclusions have yet to be published, the restora- tion of the Chigi Chapel in the Roman church of Santa Maria del Popolo has already delivered striking visual results. The heart of the chapel is Sebastiano’s massive altarpiece of the Nativity of the Virgin, that measures nearly six meters by three and a half. [Plate 2]. Roughly contemporaneous with the letter of Soranzo, but shrouded for many years in soot, poorly lit, and obscured by the nearby works by Raphael and Bernini, this late masterpiece of Sebastiano’s Roman years, on which work began some time after August 1530, had been unduly neglected.5 In preparation for this altarpiece, Sebastiano had the back wall of the chapel removed and replaced by large blocks of peperino. The cleaning of the surface has revealed an extraordinarily subtle handling of paint rich in glowing colors—precisely those effects Sebastiano seems to have sought to achieve when working in oils on a stone surface. In two senses this altarpiece represents a bravura performance on Sebas tiano’s part—not only in its sheer size and elaborate preparation but also in its ability to enmesh the spectator directly in the sacred drama. These are quali- ties inherent in Sebastiano’s art but they reach their apogee in his paintings on a stone surface. In these, he is harnessing his consummate technical abilities in the service of a deeply considered religious art. Sebastiano’s group of paintings on stone represent the culmination of a delight in technical experimentation that began immediately after his arrival in Rome, if not even earlier. From the beginning of his Roman career in 1511, he had proved himself to be among the leading technical innovators of the early 16th century, although this aspect of his practice has largely been overlooked. The few studies of this phenomenon of painting on stone mentioned in the Introduction have highlighted Sebastiano’s role as a pioneer but not concerned themselves with the reasons behind this development or its technical aspects.6 Such neglect is unjustifiable, as none other of his contemporaries at Rome or

4 In what follows I am especially indebted to the insights that were provided by Elena Calvillo’s thought provoking and ground breaking 2013 article, “Authoritative copies and divine origi- nals: Lucretian metaphor, painting on stone, and the problem of originality in Michelangelo’s Rome,” Renaissance Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2013), 453-508. 5 John Shearman, “The Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961), 129-60; Antonio Pinelli, “La Cappella delle tombe scambiate: Novità sulla Cappella Chigi in Santa Maria del Popolo,” in Francesco Salviati ou la Bella Maniera. Actes des colloques de Rome et de Paris (1998), ed. Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Phillipe Costamagna, and Michel Hochmann (Rome, 2001), pp. 253-85. 6 Anne-Laure Collomb, Splendeurs d’Italie: La peinture sur pierre à la Renaissance (Rennes, 2012).