Sebastiano del Piombo

Michelangelo seems to have entertained no thought of printing his poems in his lifetime.

He distributed them freely among his friends, of whom Sebastiano del Piombo, Luigi del Riccio, Donato Giannotti, Vittoria Colonna, and Tommaso de' Cavalieri were in this respect the most favored.

In course of time some of these friends, partly by the gift of the originals and partly by obtaining copies, formed more or less complete collections, and it undoubtedly occurred to more than one to publish them.

Ascanio Condivi, at the close of his biography, makes this announcement.

Michelangelo seems to have entertained no thought of printing his poems in his lifetime.

He distributed them freely among his friends, of whom Sebastiano del Piombo, Luigi del Riccio, Donato Gianotti, Vittoria Colonna, and Tommaso de Cavalieri were in this respect the most favored.

In course of time some of these friends, partly by the gift of the originals and partly by obtaining copies, formed more or less complete collections, and it undoubtedly occurred to more than one to publish them.

Ascanio Condivi, at the close of his biography makes this announcement i hope ere long to make public some of his sonnets and madrigals which i have been long collecting both from himself and others who possessed them with the view to proving to the world the force of his inventive genius in the beauty of the thoughts produced by that divine spirit Condivi's promise was not fulfilled.

We're continuing our conversation on the Villa Farnesina.

That is the pleasure palace of the banker Agostino Chigi in Rome, lavishly decorated by Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, and many more artists, including the subject of our conversation today.

an extraordinary painter from Siena who was hired to paint the nuptial chamber of the villa featuring scenes from the life of Alexander the Great.

It's very exciting stuff, guys.

Yes, the Sienese banker has a preference for other Sienese, or Sienese.

Yet, he also hires, then, Sebastiano del Piombo, who's from the Venetian School of Painting, and we're going to look at one of his frescoes, and of course, Raphael, who is from Urbino, along with all of their assistants.

You might remember a podcast from way back featuring an interview about Giovanni Daudine, who painted a great deal of those floral and animal motifs inside of the villa, so I'm not going to labor Giovanni Daudine's involvement too much.

It is something tricky to sort out the exact order in which the villa was painted.

However, a lot of it was done by his workshop, who was essentially painting his design.

Those were painted later on, though, in 1518.

Before that, around 1512-ish, Raphael was at work alongside Sebastiano del Piombo, that painter from the Venetian school, creating their dual frescoes in the loggia of Galatea, where Sebastiano painted the dreadful Cyclops Polyphemus.

and Raphael painted one of his most famous frescoes, the Nymph Galatea, this one painted by the very hand of Raphael.