SALVIATI, Cecchino del
(b. 1510, Firenze, d. 1563, Roma)

Raising of Lazarus

1540s
Oil on panel, 89 x 67 cm
Palazzo Colonna, Rome

Salviati brought Roman artistic models to Florence without significant modifications, an example being the Raising of Lazarus. This work clarifies how Salviati displayed up-to-date Roman artistic values in a sophisticated Florentine context on the small scale of the vertical easel painting. It is basically dominated by the muscular nude of Lazarus whose detached index finger indicates recent death. The crowded composition is punctuated by a vertical caesura in the centre. There are obvious quotations from Michelangelo (the Libyan Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel ceiling is used for one of the bystanders near Christ), from Raphael) the woman in the lower left foreground from the Vatican Transfiguration), and there are also quotations from Sebastiano del Piombo and Polidoro.