Sebastiano del Piombo

Luciani, Sebastiano
Piombo, Sebastiano del

Venetian, 1485 - 1547

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A bearded, pale-skinned man with shoulder-length, dark brown hair is shown from the hips up against a dark, emerald-green curtain in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s body is angled slightly to our left, while his head turns to look directly at us with dark, shadowed eyes. His chin-length hair is parted down the middle and tucked behind his ears. He wears a dark robe over a white shirt with a high collar. In his left hand, to our right, he holds a folded piece of yellowish paper or cloth, and his other hand rests just below it with fingers pointing downward. He is lit from our right so the far side of his face is thrown into shadow. At his shoulder and to our left, a shelf or table covered with green holds a globe, an open book with pages filled with text, a stack of closed books, and a quill resting in an inkwell. Some of the text in the open book is visible but not clearly legible. Most of the background is filled with the jewel-toned green curtain, but a sliver to the left, behind the objects, is black.
Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of a Humanist, c. 1520, oil on panel transferred to hardboard, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.38

Portrait of a Humanist

Sebastiano del Piombo · c. 1520 · oil on panel transferred to hardboard ·  Accession ID  1961.9.38

Sebastiano del Piombo, A Prophet Addressed by an Angel, 1517/1519, black chalk with gray and brown wash above four stylus arcs at bottom right, heightened with white and squared with red chalk on blue paper, laid down on late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century mount, Gift of Robert H. and Clarice Smith, 1985.40.1

A Prophet Addressed by an Angel

Sebastiano del Piombo · 1517/1519 · black chalk with gray and brown wash above four stylus arcs at bottom right, heightened with white and squared with red chalk on blue paper, laid down on late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century mount ·  Accession ID  1985.40.1

Four light-skinned men gather around a table in front of a forest-green background in this horizontal painting. In the right half of the picture, two men behind the table are shown from about the waist up. The third man, Cardinal Sauli, sits at the narrow end of the table to our left, and his legs are cropped by the bottom edge of the painting below the knee. The fourth man leans toward the cardinal, and is shown from about the knees up along the left edge of the painting. Cardinal Sauli dominates the composition. His body is angled to our right, and he turns his head to look at us with dark eyes under arched brows. He has a narrow face, a wide nose, and his lips are closed over a round chin. He wears a red cap over brown hair and a red, waist-length cape that buttons down over his chest. His voluminous, long-sleeved, bright white robe has red at the cuffs. Upon closer inspection, what appears to be a black speck on his knee turns out to be a fly painted to look as if it had landed on the surface of the panel. The cardinal’s elbows rest on the arms of a wine-red velvet chair. His right hand, to our left, holds what may be green leather gloves, and he wears a gold ring with a dark oval stone on that ring finger. He rests his other hand palm down on the table, and wears a gold ring with a red stone on the index finger of that hand. Just beyond that hand, a pewter-silver bell edged with wide bands of chased gold sits on the table, which is covered with a cloth patterned with crimson red, harvest yellow, black, and white. At our far left, the man leans toward Cardinal Sauli’s right shoulder, facing our right almost in profile. He has dark, chin-length hair, black eyebrows, a long, straight nose, and a dark, trimmed mustache and beard. His mouth is slightly open. He wears a bright white embroidered, collarless shirt under a black tunic. The fingers of his left hand rest on his chest and he barely touches the back of the velvet chair with his other hand. Behind the table, to our right, the final two men face each other in profile. The man to the left in this pair, closer to Cardinal Sauli, has close-cropped dark hair, a prominent nose, and black eyebrows. His hooded, dark eyes look off to our right, and a mustache frames his closed lips. He rests his right hand on an open book, illustrated with maps, on the table in front of him. The man on the far right holds up his right hand at chest height, and points his right index finger straight up. He has a pointed nose and dark eyes, and his lips are parted under a faint mustache. His brown hair falls to the collar of his ruby-red robe, which falls in vertical pleats from the high neckline. The deep green background seems close to the group, creating a shallow space. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had written on a piece of paper stuck to the front of the table, but the writing is nearly illegible.
Sebastiano del Piombo, Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, His Secretary, and Two Geographers, 1516, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.37

Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, His Secretary, and Two Geographers

Sebastiano del Piombo · 1516 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.37

A young woman with a pale, peachy skin is shown from waist up, wearing a shimmering, royal-blue dress in this vertical painting. Her body is angled to our right as she holds a metal object, perhaps a vessel or incense burner, in her hands by her chest. She turns and tilts her head to our left, but then looks back across her body, off to our right with flint-gray eyes. She has a full, oval-shaped face with a straight nose, smooth cheeks, and her pale pink lips are closed. A gray pearl earring hangs from the ear we can see. Her auburn-brown hair is parted down the middle, and loosely pulled back into a braid that brushes her left shoulder, to our right. The blue dress has a square neckline and a fitted bodice. Light glints off the fabric, shading it from royal to sapphire blue. A voluminous white sleeve is rolled back to her right elbow, to our left. That arm and hand nearly span the width of the painting as she holds the vessel, which has a conical top, near the lower right corner of the composition. The background is solid black.
Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of a Young Woman as a Wise Virgin, c. 1510, oil on hardboard transferred from panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.9

Portrait of a Young Woman as a Wise Virgin

Sebastiano del Piombo · c. 1510 · oil on hardboard transferred from panel ·  Accession ID  1952.2.9

Nicolas de Larmessin IV, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury, published 1729, engraving, Rosenwald Collection, 1950.14.1010

Cardinal Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury

Nicolas de Larmessin IV · published 1729 · engraving ·  Accession ID  1950.14.1010