Matthias Wivel

Sebastiano del Piombo and Michelangelo Matthias Wivel

The collaboration between Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) and Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547), is among the most extraordinary artistic partnerships of the early modern period. It produced works of startling originality, crucial to the development of the so-called High Renaissance in the first decades of the sixteenth century. It was arguably Michelangelo's most creative collaboration, helping him refine motifs and narrative strategies, and it proved determining for Sebastianos development of a monumental, spiritually invested idiom whose influence became a touchstone for religious art deep into the following century, and for principles of painterly abstraction beyond. Inspired by the exhibition Michelangelo & Sebastiano, mounted at The National Gallery in London in 2017, this book unites a group of international scholars in reflection on the two artists, their collaboration and its wider significance.