_Sebastiano del Piombo_ (Venetian: 1485-1547). _See_ 1.
In 1531 Sebastiano received from the Pope the office of Frate del
Piombo, Monk of the Leaden Signet, which was affixed to the pontifical
diplomas. An entertaining account of Sebastiano's appointment is given
in Benvenuto Cellini's Memoirs (see Symonds's translation, i. 150). The
painter is here dressed in the black robe of his office; on the table
are two parchment-deeds, with Sebastiano's hand on the seal of one of
them, and the picture thus represents, perhaps, the ratification of the
appointment by his friend and patron, the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici.
The artist's portrait of himself agrees very well with what Vasari says
of his character. He was a painter more of necessity than of choice,
and when once he received his valuable sinecure he forsook his palette
for the lute, and people found it very hard to get any work out of him.
He much preferred talking about pictures, says Vasari, to executing
them. He was "of a very full habit," and young painters who resorted to
him "rarely made any great profit, since from his example they could
learn little beside the art of good living." But he was a thoroughly
good fellow, and a kindly withal. A better or more agreeable companion
never lived; and when he died he commanded that his remains should
be carried to the tomb without any ceremony of priests and friars,
and that the amount which would have been thus expended should be
distributed to the poor, for the love of God: and so was it done. But
in one branch of art, adds Vasari, Sebastiano was always ready to work,
namely, in painting portraits, such as this, from the life. "In this
art he did certainly surpass all others in delicacy and excellence--so
much so that when Cardinal Ippolito fell in love with the lady Giulia
Gonzaga, he sent Sebastiano with four swift horses to her home for
the purpose of taking her portrait, and in about a month the artist
completed the likeness, when, what with the celestial beauties of that
lady, and what with the able hand of so accomplished a master, the
picture proved to be a most divine one." No. 24 was formerly thought to
be the portrait in question.