Sebastiano Luciani, called Sebastiano del Piombo

J. Hartman;

Anonymous sale, London, South Kensington, Christie’s, 19 April 2000, lot 26 (as Circle of Sebastiano Luciani, called Sebastiano del Piombo);
Whence acquired by the present owner.

This intensely expressive image representing Christ's agony during the Passion is by one of the leading painters of the Italian Renaissance, Sebastiano del Piombo, whose sobriquet derives from his appointment in 1531 to the office of the Piombo (Keeper of the Papal Seals). Although Venetian by birth, from 1511 Sebastiano lived in Rome at the instigation of the Siennese banker Agostino Chigi, where he worked alongside other leading masters of the Italian High Renaissance, in particular Michelangelo. The present work can be dated on stylistic grounds towards the last two decades of Sebastiano's career, leading up to his death in Rome in 1547.

Following the painting's appearance at auction in 2000, the panel was cleaned to reveal an image of high quality that leading scholars consider to be by the hand of Sebastiano himself. The composition relates to a drawing by the artist of a bearded man, now in a North American private collection, which has been variously described as an image of a prophet or saint (see Fig. 1).¹ George Goldner considered it in all probability to be a representation of a saint holding an unfinished cross or a pilgrim’s staff.² The sheet may have served as a preparatory drawing for a devotional painting of such a subject, now lost or never completed, for it was not uncommon for Sebastiano to reuse motifs. A comparison between the present work and the drawing reveals a number of striking aspects that they share in common: the tormented face angled to one side; the eyes heavy-lidded; the lips parted to reveal teeth; the prominent angled hand reaching across the left arm (its schematic treatment in the painting and the peculiarity of the two conjoined fingers are characteristic of Sebastiano); and the robe’s heavy folds. The principal difference between the two lies in the substitution of the cloth covering Christ’s head with a cruciform halo, so that the shaded area of fabric falling to the side of the bearded man’s brow and cheekbone is replaced with carefully painted hair that flows onto Christ’s shoulder.

In addition to the drawing, there exists a painting of similar overall composition to the present work today in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, which has long been considered to be a copy after a lost original by Sebastiano.³ Whilst the pose of Christ's head and right hand is similar in the Pitti painting, the composition is extended on all sides to create a greater sense of space around the figure of Christ, although at the expense of the intense directness and immediacy of the present composition. The overall effect of the Pitti picture however is hard-edged and linear. Intriguingly whilst the latter clearly depicts an Ecce Homo, the iconography of the present work is ambiguous. Here Christ wears no crown of thorns, and bears no wounds. Only the rope alludes to his arrest and betrayal, whilst the presence of the halo draws attention to his sanctity. Both elements pertain to the events leading up to the crowning of thorns, when Christ, accused of blasphemy before the High Priest, confirmed his identity as the Son of Man.

The Christ in Agony has the intensity of feeling found in Sebastiano’s late religious works and is likely to date from the artist’s late maturity. Both the drawing and the present painting share the same emotive force as Christ carrying the Cross in the Musée du Louvre, Paris,⁴ a drawing which Paul Joannides argues may have served for two pictures of Christ Carrying the Cross by Sebastiano: that in the Museo del Prado, Madrid and the picture for the Spanish ambassador at the papal court Ferdinando da Silva, Count of Cifuentes, a work still in the painter’s studio in 1537 and now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.⁵ A date in the 1530s has been suggested for the drawing in a North American private collection and this would accord well also with the painting.

One of Sebastiano’s last works of the 1540s, the powerfully austere Christ carrying the Cross in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, also focuses on the intense anguish in the face of Christ.⁶ There too the artist has omitted all superfluous details – including the crown of thorns – as if rather than merely representing a suffering man, the man has become a symbol of suffering itself. In its emotionally complex yet simplified form, this painting shares the same fundamental message. With great subtlety Sebastiano has created an image of Christ that in its expression of resignation foreshadows the suffering he will endure as the scriptures are fulfilled.

1. London, Sotheby’s, 2 July 1984, lot 10; London, Sotheby’s, 2 July 1990, lot 39.

2. Rome, Palazzo Venezia and Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Sebastiano del Piombo 1485–1547, 8 February – 18 May; 28 June – 28 September 2008, cat. no. 102.

3. See M. Hirst, Sebastiano del Piombo, Oxford 1981, p. 125, pl. 144.

4. Département des Arts Graphiques, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 5053.

5. Rome and Berlin 2008, op. cit., cat. no. 92. See also Hirst, op. cit., pl. 113 and pl. 167.

6. Hirst, op. cit., pl. 169.