Ceres Sitting on the Edge of a Fountain

This 1508 Ceres Sitting on the Edge of a Fountain dates from Sebastiano's Venetian period and reflects the influence of Giorgione's mythological paintings. The classical goddess of agriculture provided a subject for the sensuous, poetic approach to the female figure that characterized early 16th-century Venetian painting. Sebastiano del Piombo, born Sebastiano Luciani in Venice around 1485 and active in Rome from 1511 until his death in 1547, occupied one of the most interesting positions in sixteenth-century Italian painting: trained in the Venetian tradition under Giorgione and influenced by the young Titian, he subsequently became the closest collaborator of Michelangelo in Rome, receiving figure compositions from the great Florentine that he executed with his Venetian command of color and atmosphere. The resulting fusion — Venetian surface and Roman form — was his most distinctive contribution to the tradition. His appointment as keeper of the Papal Seal (Piombo) in 1531 brought him financial security but somewhat reduced his artistic output in the final decades of his career.

The painting demonstrates the atmospheric landscape and sensuous color of Sebastiano's Venetian training, with soft modeling and warm tones that evoke the pastoral mood associated with Giorgionesque painting.