Birth of Adonis

This 1510 Birth of Adonis depicts a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses, painted during Sebastiano's late Venetian period just before his departure for Rome. The mythological subject reflects the taste for poetic, narrative painting that characterized Venetian art under Giorgione's influence. His figures carry Venetian sensuous richness combined with the overwhelming physical presence that Michelangelo's influence brought to his Roman works. 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 poetic landscape style and warm colorism of Sebastiano's Venetian training, with atmospheric effects and sensuous color that recall Giorgione's mythological paintings.