⁓ Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects
Sebastiano del Piombo (c.1485-1547), was born in Venice, was trained perhaps by Giorgione and moved to Rome in 1511 during a time of incredible artistic production in the city. He was a close friend and protégé of Michelangelo and as such was considered a fellow rival of Raphael. This is particularly true in terms of the Raising of Lazarus, which was in competition with Raphael's Transfiguration (in the Vatican museums), to be installed in the cathedral of the French city of Narbonne.
After Raphael's death in 1520 and the Sack of Rome in 1527 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, Sebastiano returned from safety in Venice to Rome as its foremost painter. Pope Clement VII, whom Sebastiano painted several times over his career, rewarded him with the office of Keeper of the Papal Seal, hence his epithet, 'del Piombo.'
In his move to Rome and learning under Michelangelo, his Venetian style quickly changed and turned to a darker palette. He was commissioned to paint many religious frescoes and paintings over the course of his artistic career and he was known to be highly innovative in his material practice. But above all, his reputation in his own time and thereafter was for his abilities as a perceptive portraitist, and it is this genre above all other types of subject he attempted, that populate his oeuvre.
