San Giovanni Crisostomo Altarpiece

Sebastiano del Piombo's San Giovanni Crisostomo Altarpiece from around 1510 was painted for the church of San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice before his move to Rome — his last major Venetian work and one of the finest altarpieces produced in Venice in the early sixteenth century. The subject combines the standing saints of Venetian sacra conversazione tradition with a landscape setting influenced by Giorgione. Sebastiano brings to this Venetian format a monumental gravity and spatial ambition that anticipates the direction his work would take after contact with Raphael and Michelangelo in Rome. The altarpiece remains in its original church, one of the few major Venetian altarpieces to survive intact in its intended setting.

Sebastiano's synthesis of Bellini's luminous color with Giorgione's atmospheric sfumato creates a richly tonal composition, while the large-scale figures anticipate the Roman grandeur he would soon embrace.