15 March–25 June 2017 EXHIBITION PLAN 2 4 1 3 5 Entrance 6 Shop A chronology of the lives and times Room 1 Origins of Michelangelo and Sebastiano is at the back of this booklet. Room 2 Friendship and Rivalry Room 3 Defining the Roman Style Within the exhibition, light levels are kept low to protect the works. If you The Correspondence have difficulty reading this booklet or Pope Clement VII the labels on the walls, please pick up a large-text version from the dispenser Room 4 The Risen Christ at the exhibition entrance. Room 5 The Borgherini Chapel Project Room 6 A Parting of Ways The exhibition has been made possible by the provision of insurance through the Government Indemnity Scheme. The National Gallery would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity. Introduction Room 1 100 MICHELANGELO ORIGINS & SEBASTIANO Michelangelo and Sebastiano came from The story of the friendship between the two very different artistic traditions. world-famous Florentine artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) and the lesser-known Michelangelo trained with the Florentine Venetian painter Sebastiano Luciani, called painter Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547), is both and subsequently learned to sculpt at the epic and personal. The two came from widely court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, ‘the Magnificent’ different artistic traditions, and Michelangelo’s (1449–1492), Florence’s de facto ruler. fierce independence made him an unlikely Prodigiously talented, he quickly assimilated candidate for collaboration. But after meeting the systematic working method practised in Rome in 1511, at a time now recognised in Tuscany, in which a composition was as a high point of the Renaissance, they came prepared scrupulously in advance, largely together to create works of striking force through drawing. and originality. Spanning about twenty-five years, their tale is one of camaraderie, mutual Sebastiano, ten years Michelangelo’s influence and eventually of rupture and junior, was the most accomplished acrimony. It takes place against a backdrop of Venetian artist of his generation. He mastered bitter rivalries, political turbulence, religious the improvisatory painting method introduced schism and war. Through a selection of their by his mentor, Giorgione (about 1477–1510), works and personal correspondence, this which favoured atmosphere over precision. exhibition explores an extraordinary meeting His organic approach to picture-making and of minds that shaped the development of his range as an oil painter, combining rich Western art. colour and subtle passages with ones of unprecedented expressive boldness, stood in marked contrast to Michelangelo’s way of working. MICHELANGELO 3 SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO 1 The Virgin and Child with The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels Saint Joseph, Saint John the (‘The Manchester Madonna’) Baptist and a Donor about 1497, possibly as early as 1494 1517 After six years in Rome, Sebastiano had thoroughly This remarkably sculptural, unfinished early assimilated Michelangelo’s sculptural and dynamic picture reveals the meticulous painting approach to the figure. The Christ Child in this method Michelangelo learned from his master, picture, for instance, is remarkably similar to the one Ghirlandaio. Working in quick-drying egg tempera, in Michelangelo’s ‘Taddei Tondo’ nearby – a work he adopted a piecemeal approach, barely laying Sebastiano probably never saw. His Venetian roots in some elements while completing others with are still apparent in the richly saturated colouring exquisite subtlety. The relative rigidity of the and the typically Venetian horizontal format of the underdrawing visible at left indicates Michelangelo painting. The donor is almost certainly the Florentine was copying from a carefully prepared drawing; a banker Pierfrancesco Borgherini (1488–1558), an method typical of Florentine painting. important patron to both artists (see room 5). Tempera on poplar Oil on wood NG809. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1870 NG1450. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1895 2 MICHELANGELO 4 MICHELANGELO Study of the Virgin and The Virgin and Child with the Child with another figure Infant Saint John the Baptist about 1517 (‘The Taddei Tondo’) In March 1517, Sebastiano’s friendship with about 1504–5 Michelangelo was such that he could ask him for The Virgin reaches toward the young Baptist a drawing of the Virgin and Child for a painting, who offers her son a fluttering goldfinch, a bird (very likely 3). This lively sketch, quickly made in associated with Christ’s later suffering. The infant red chalk, is likely to have been Michelangelo’s Christ shies away, but looks back, awakening to response. As a point of departure for the picture, his fate. While the relief is probably unfinished, it shows how just a cursory visual prompt could the varying levels of completion are typical stimulate a new composition. of Michelangelo’s aesthetic. Raised areas are Red chalk, upper borderline in black chalk, on paper smoothly polished while shade is texturally evoked using a claw chisel, hatched as if the artist were X9020. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. no. I 198 (Koenigs Collection) drawing in stone. This tondo (roundel) is named after its Florentine patron, Taddeo Taddei. Marble X9025. Royal Academy of Arts, London 5 MICHELANGELO 7 SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO Studies of children Judith (or Salome?) about 1503–5 1510 This sheet contains a number of lively studies of This is either Judith, the Old Testament heroine a walking toddler. Exploratory figural sketches who beheaded the enemy general Holofernes to like these, some drawn from life and others from save her tribe, or Salome, who, as described in the memory, often made their way into Michelangelo’s New Testament, requested the beheading of John finished works. Here, the profile studies at bottom the Baptist. Both were common subjects, although informed the young Saint John the Baptist in the depictions of Judith were more popular in Venice. marble ‘Taddei Tondo’ (4). The refinement of this woman’s features, the flashing blue of her sleeve and the radiant sunrise Pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk, on paper show Sebastiano’s virtuoso handling of oil paint, X9011. The British Museum, London while her protruding elbow demonstrates his interest in sculptural form. SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO Oil on wood 6 Saint Bartholomew NG2493. The National Gallery, London. Salting Bequest, 1910 and Saint Sebastian about 1510–11 SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO These paintings, now framed together, 8 once decorated the outside of a pair of The Judgement of Solomon organ shutters in the Venetian Church of about 1506–9 San Bartolomeo al Rialto. Standing beneath a Roman-style triumphal arch, the saints appear, King Solomon solves a dispute over maternity like classical statues brought to life through rich by ordering that the contested child be cut in colour. Sebastiano deftly handles the medium two, prompting its real mother—probably at of oil paint, contrasting areas of great subtlety right—to save the infant by offering it to the false with vigorous, broadly painted passages, such mother, presumably pointing at left. The painting as Bartholomew’s cloak and Sebastian’s drapery. is unfinished, and no child is visible. The vigorous underdrawing and many radical revisions testify to Oil on canvas Sebastiano’s improvisatory approach. Also evident X9235 and X9236. Venice, Church of San Bartolomeo, is his interest in group dynamics and the wide on deposit at the Gallerie dell’Accademia variety of reactions to the event. Tempera (lower layers) and oil on canvas, traces of gold leaf (in half-dome) X8326. Kingston Lacy, The Bankes Collection (National Trust) Room 2 200 9 AFTER MICHELANGELO Pietà(copied after Pietà, FRIENDSHIP 1497–1500, St Peter’s, Vatican City) & RIVALRY 1975 This is a cast of the famous sculpture, still in Rome, the home of the papacy, was a Rome, with which the 25 year-old Michelangelo natural destination for artists seeking established his fame. In it he replaced the usual powerful patronage and knowledge of focus on the Virgin’s anguish and Christ’s classical art. It was a centre of ecclesiastical suffering, with an elegantly restrained yet power and wealth as well as antique ruins intensely emotional contemplation of a mother’s and monuments. The young Michelangelo loss. In addition to emphasising the Virgin’s made his name there in the 1490s with his femininity and immaculate purity, he sculpted Pietà (9), and returned in 1506 to significantly enlarged her scale, acknowledging work for Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–1513). her importance as mother of the Church. Plaster cast from five-piece moulds, Sebastiano arrived in 1511 and soon with wood and iron armature met Michelangelo, who was working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He also X9026. Vatican Museums, Vatican City encountered the exceptionally talented young painter from Urbino, Raphael (1483–1520), MICHELANGELO who had just completed his fresco decoration 10 of the pope’s personal library, including the The Entombment famous School of Athens. In comparing the (or Christ being two artists, critics praised Michelangelo’s imagination and ability to render figures carried to his Tomb) sculpturally, but declared Raphael the better about 1500–1 painter because he combined these skills with a more sophisticated use of colour. In this unfinished altarpiece, the lithe body of Christ is held up for our contemplation as he is Michelangelo detested Raphael. In order carried to his tomb. Although Michelangelo – to thwart him, he sought an alliance with unusually – painted it in oil, he did not exploit Sebastiano, whose mastery of oil painting the medium’s potential for layering or correction, in the newest Venetian manner, little seen opting instead for the piecemeal approach used in Rome, was attracting attention. By when painting in fresco or egg tempera.