![]() ![]() Sebastiano consciously responded to ideas pioneered by Raphael. This coincided with the birth of Sebastiano’s first son, for whom Michelangelo became godfather. Sebastiano finished work on the painting by May 1519, when it was put on public view in his studio in Rome in December 1519 it was formally unveiled at the Vatican to great admiration from everyone including the pope. Raphael was reportedly attempting to have Sebastiano’s altarpiece dispatched to Narbonne so that the two paintings could not be viewed side by side in Rome. On 2 July 1518, Sebastiano wrote to Michelangelo to say that the altarpiece was almost finished, but that he was delaying completing it as he did not want Raphael – who had not yet started his own painting – to see the result. In January 1518 Michelangelo briefly visited Rome and helped Sebastiano to revise the figure of Lazarus (three preparatory sketches by Michelangelo survive, in the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne and the British Museum, London). In a letter dated 19 January 1517, Michelangelo’s friend and assistant Leonardo Sellaio wrote to the artist in Florence that Sebastiano feared Raphael would do everything in his power to prevent him from finishing the painting so it couldn’t be compared to his own work. The rivalry between Raphael and frequent collaborators Sebastiano and Michelangelo was fierce. The pairing the Transfiguration and the raising of Lazarus was a tradition stretching back to medieval times. Around the same time, Giulio commissioned Raphael to paint another altarpiece for the same destination – The Transfiguration (now in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City). ![]() Lazarus was especially venerated and was believed to have preached there. The Raising of Lazarus was commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de‘ Medici (1478–1534), probably in late 1516, as an altarpiece for Narbonne Cathedral in southern France, where he had just become bishop. However, his high-key colour range and use of cangiante colours – sharp gradations of colour to resemble shot silk – are the direct result of his admiration for Michelangelo’s bold, unnaturalistic colouring on the Sistine Ceiling in Rome. Sebastiano’s approach, creating subtle variation in hue and depth through the use of oil glazes, is typically Venetian. It is a bravura display of oil technique, interweaving a remarkable range of bright colours across the surface. The graphic, linear design of the figures owes a great deal to Florentine examples, but the way it is painted is more typical of Venetian art, with the design drawn freehand onto the panel with a brush and, in places, with substantial revisions made during painting. Giotto’s Tuscan masterwork was painted in the Veneto, and Sebastiano’s painting combines elements of Florentine and Venetian artistic traditions. The basic arrangement is derived from Giotto’s treatment of the subject in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. The painting brings together more than 40 characters in a dense and complex composition. Faces are varied – young and old, dark and fair, male and female – and display a wide variety of reactions to the miracle, encouraging the viewer to share in their emotions and arrive at their own interpretation of what is happening. A crowd surges along both banks of the river from the distant town to observe the miracle for themselves. Three women cover their noses against the smells from the opened grave. Saint Peter at bottom left falls to his knees, while other disciples turn to one another in amazement. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.’ She averts her gaze, perhaps in awe and perhaps partly in shame at having doubted Christ’s ability to help her dead brother, for which he reprimanded her with the words, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. Martha, who had just reprimanded Christ for arriving too late to heal her brother, raises her hands. The resurrected Lazarus stares in wide-eyed shock at his saviour, while a kneeling man helps him remove the shroud and bindings in which he had been buried. Sebastiano shows Christ standing in the foreground with one hand raised to invoke the power of God and the other pointing to Lazarus, who is seated on the edge of his stone tomb.Ĭhrist speaks the life-giving words, ‘Lazarus come forth’. At the request of the sisters Martha and Mary, Christ visited the grave of their brother Lazarus and raised him from the dead (John 11: 1–44).
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