[Luciani, Sebastiano; Venetus, Sebastianus; Veneziano, Sebastiano; Viniziano,Sebastiano]
(b ?Venice, 1485–6; d Rome, 21 June 1547).
Italian painter. He was one of the most important artists in Italy in the first half of the 16th century, active in Venice and Rome (see fig.). His early, Venetian, paintings are reminiscent of Giovanni Bellini and to a lesser extent of Giorgione. With his move to Rome in 1511 he came under the influence of Raphael and then of Michelangelo, who supplied him with drawings. After the death of Raphael (1520), he was the leading painter working in Rome and was particularly noted as a portrait painter. In his finest works, such as the Pietà (1513; Viterbo, Mus. Civ.) and the Flagellation (1516–24; Rome, S Pietro in Montorio), there is a remarkable fusion of the Venetian use of colour and the grand manner of Central Italian classicism.
Mauro Lucco