"La testa colossale non di chiaroscuro": Sebastiano del Piombo 'teorico' alla Farnesina

Placing Sebastiano del Piombo’s Polyphemus side by side with Raphael’s Galatea in the Villa Farnesina art critics see a first comparison between the Venetian school of painting and the Tuscan–Roman school. Both explicitly match the desires of a single patron, Agostino Chigi. In spite of the wealth of articles written about this, it is surprising just how little attention has been paid to the Colossal Head to be found in the same room of the Farnesina. It can be seen in one of the lunettes. The other lunette frescoes, painted by Sebastiano, depict scenes from Ovid on the theme of air. Without a doubt this exceptional portrayal, an absolute one of a kind in the entire spectrum of renaissance painting, needs to be seen in relationship to the all important question at that time over the comparison between these two schools of painting. Who to attribute the Head to has always oscillated between Baldassarre Peruzzi and Sebastiano del Piombo. The balance is in favour of the latter, given that by then, 1511 and 1512, he’d come into contact with Michelangelo. Thanks too to this contact, Sebastiano would no doubt have rapidly matured in his approach to painting, from a theoretical point of view as well. The ultimate meaning behind the Farnesina Head is primarily tied to other themes under discussion in those years, from the use of chiaroscuro to the struggle for supremacy between painting and sculpture.