Michelangelo and Sebastiano at National Gallery

The divine Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, poet, creator of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, hero of the High Renaissance. So much has been written about his genius, his turbulent personality, his feuds with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. But there's been much less focus on a creative friendship he had with a painter from Venice, Sebastiano del Piombo. This exhibition at the National Gallery aims to change all that. There are nearly 70 works here by the two men. Paintings, drawings, letters, sculptures. Altogether, it tells a fascinating story of their friendship and their collaboration which ended in acrimony. This painting, The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, is Sebastiano del Piombo's masterpiece and it's also the greatest fruit of his remarkable collaboration with Michelangelo. What's wonderful about this painting is that you can literally prove, you can literally see that the two artists did indeed work together. Michelangelo provided Sebastiano with drawings for the composition and indeed the whole painting, you might say, is a variation on the theme of Michelangelo's first great sculptural masterpiece, the Pietà in the Vatican. It's a work full of pictorial innovations. Everybody was struck by the greatest innovation of all, painting this scene of sorrow and grief in the middle of the night. It's lit not by the sun but by that full moon glimmering behind a wisp of cloud. This isn't just a great painting in its own right. It caused a revolution in Roman painting and spurred Raphael to create one of his gracious masterpieces. That's the subtext of this exhibition. It's part of a kind of chess match in which Sebastiano and Michelangelo will move their queen diagonally, threatening Raphael's king and he will then advance with his own knight and create another great masterpiece. It's an untold story but an absolutely fascinating one. When they took this great painting off the wall of the church in Viterbo, look what they found. Michelangelo doodling on the back of Sebastiano's wooden painting. Sebastiano met Michelangelo in 1511 as Michelangelo was putting the finishing touches to the Sistine Chapel. Imagine the effect that seeing the Sistine Chapel must have had on the young Sebastiano. The two quickly became friends, forming an artistic alliance against Raphael. So this is perhaps the most spectacularly theatrical of all Sebastiano's paintings. It's also the founding picture of the National Gallery here in London. Its catalogue number is NG1. Lazarus has been dead for four days. Mary and Martha plead with Jesus to save their brother and this is the miracle taking place. It's a little bit difficult to say which elements of this composition were designed by Michelangelo and which came from Sebastiano but we can make some reasonably intelligent guesses. I think this central figure of Christ gesticulating rather as God creates life in Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling with that finger outstretched, I'm pretty sure that that figure was designed by Michelangelo. What about the colour? Blue and pink and lilac, they come from the Sistine Chapel. Nowhere else in Italian painting do you see these fantastic, vivid, vibrant, acid clashes. What's going on here is not just a collaboration between Michelangelo and Sebastiano but a process by which Renaissance painting is being reinvented and refreshed. This is an absolutely fascinating exhibition. What's great about this exhibition is that, of course, it confirms Michelangelo as one of the most remarkable artists of all time but it brings Sebastiano back into the limelight and he deserves that. He was a really fascinating artist even if he didn't always see eye to eye with that man. Do come and see the exhibition for yourself if you can. It's on until June 25th and there's 50% off for National Art Pass holders.