Portrait of a Woman

Sebastiano del Piombo's Portrait of a Woman from around 1512 dates to his early Roman period when he was establishing himself in the Eternal City alongside and in competition with Raphael. Female portraiture in Rome in this period was increasingly influenced by Leonardo's sfumato approach, which had transformed the genre through the Mona Lisa and other works. Sebastiano's woman combines Venetian atmospheric warmth — inherited from his Giorgionesque training — with the more formal frontal presentation of Roman portraiture. The work demonstrates how Venetian and Florentine-Roman approaches to portraiture were converging in early sixteenth-century Rome.

The rich, warm Venetian coloring of the flesh and costume reflects Sebastiano's origins, while the monumental, sculptural quality of the figure demonstrates his rapid absorption of Roman artistic ideals.