04 Works, Today, February 5th, is Saint Agatha of Sicily’s Day, With Footnotes — 36
Martirio de Santa Águeda/ Martyrdom of Saint Agatha, c. 1520
Oil on panel
Height: 127 cm (50″); Width: 178 cm (70″)
Palazzo Pitti
Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–21 June 1547) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance and early Mannerist periods famous as the only major artist of the period to combine the colouring of the Venetian school in which he was trained with the monumental forms of the Roman school. He belongs both to the painting school of his native city, Venice, where he made significant contributions before he left for Rome in 1511, and that of Rome, where he stayed for the rest of his life, and whose style he thoroughly adopted.
Having achieved success as a lutenist in Venice when young, he turned to painting and trained with Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. When he first went to Rome he worked alongside Raphael and then became one of the few painters to get on well with Michelangelo…