Generally called a Pietà, perhaps it is better regarded as a Lamentation, although the full-figured seated Mary is very materially present. In fact the impact of Michelangelo on the Venetian artist is here dramatically present, in the greater than previous attention that Sebastiano pays to human anatomy on the one hand, and the monumentalisation of the figures on the other. One should not, however, belittle Sebatiano's invention in this, among the finest images painted in the second decade of the sixteenth century.
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