Pietà

Around 1516 in Rome, Michelangelo was losing ground to the younger Raphael, whose smooth grace had won the great commissions. His answer was to lend his drawing to a Venetian, Sebastiano del Piombo, who could add the rich colour Michelangelo never bothered with. This Pieta for a church in Viterbo was their first joint work. Michelangelo supplied the design, and you can feel it in the heavy, sculptural body of the dead Christ laid out on the ground. Sebastiano gave it the dark, empty landscape behind, one of the first true night scenes in Italian painting, where a cold moonlight is the only thing lighting the grieving Mary.