SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO
(b. 1485, Venezia, d. 1547, Roma)

Lamentation of Christ

1516
Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 260 x 193 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Sebastiano del Piombo trained in the workshop of Giovanni Bellini in Venice, where he was a contemporary of Giorgione. In around 1510 he moved to Rome, and apart from occasional trips away spent the rest of his life there. He brought to Roman art the new Venetian pictorial language, sense of colour and interpretation of the classical idiom. Sebastiano worked with Michelangelo, from whom he took his use of drawing as the basis of his compositional structure, as well as the monumental conception of his figures. He achieved great fame in Rome for his paintings, which expressed a classicism different to that of Raphael.

This painting shows the influence of Michelangelo.