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Shades of greatness in Rome

By Jennifer Grego
Published: February 25 2008 17:32 | Last updated: February 25 2008 17:32

For nearly 400 years, Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547) has hung in the limbo to which very good but not front-rank artists are condemned. In the late-Renaissance race in Venice and Rome, he was always in third place

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The novelist Vladimir Nabokov was entranced by the “Dorothea” portrait, and wrote a short story, “The Venetian”, in which he describes Sebastiano Luciani (the painter’s real name) as a “dissolute monk”, without any suggestion that this may have affected the quality of his painting. Vasari was rather less willing to separate the life from the art. The Palazzo Venezia’s arresting exhibition suggests that the novelist was the shrewder critic.

Until May 18, tel +39 06 6819 2230. Exhibition then goes to the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, June 28–September 29

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