Michelangelo and Sebastiano:
an exhibition that should not have been Automatic translate

LONDON. The large joint exhibition of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Sebastiano del Piombo, which opened at the National Gallery in London, was supposed to help the audience to explore the “creative partnership” between the great Renaissance master and his follower. However, in fact, the exhibition was "disadvantageous" for none of the artists represented.

The creation of such an exhibition implies a certain parity between the real colossus of painting and his former assistant. Trying to demonstrate the “creative continuity” of the infinitely famous Michelagelo and the eternally secondary Sebastiano del Piombo, the exhibition looks unnatural, as if Sebastiano did not get on it without a “patronage”.

Sebastiano gained recognition even before meeting with Michelangelo, he was an excellent colorist, masterfully worked with volumes and forms, could draw 20 or 30 figures in detail and figuratively at the same time, and each of them reacted differently to the central event of the picture - usually a biblical plot. His “Judgment of Solomon” (“The Judgment of Solomon”) or “Christ Carrying the Cross” amaze, but they, like many other best works of the artist, are not presented at the exhibition, as they are not to the period of his work with Michelangelo.

Under the influence of Michelangelo, the figures in the works of Sebastiano become more massive, sometimes grotesque, tender faces are replaced by more rigid, sometimes slavish. In many ways, it was a requirement of the era, but still you involuntarily wonder if the influence of the mentor was so useful for Sebastiano?

On the other hand, the work of Michelangelo himself is also taken out of context. There are so few of them and the choice is so inconsistent that it causes a slight sense of longing for what is never destined to happen - a full-scale retrospective of all the works of the great master.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru