The Raising of Lazarus

Around 1517 Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, who would later become Pope Clement VII, ordered two great altarpieces for the cathedral of Narbonne in France, and turned it into a contest. Raphael got one and painted his Transfiguration. The other went to Sebastiano del Piombo, who had a powerful ally. Michelangelo, no friend of Raphael, fed Sebastiano drawings and even reworked the figure of Lazarus himself, and three of his sketches for it survive. So this canvas is partly a proxy battle between two giants, fought through a third painter. Sebastiano set the miracle in a broad landscape, Lazarus still half-wrapped in his shroud as he comes back to life. Centuries later it became the first picture catalogued by the new National Gallery in London, its number one.