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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Focusing on two painted Pietàs, this essay examines the means by which the artists Giulio Clovio (1498–1578) and Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547) simultaneously copied Michelangelo’s figures and made claims about their own pictorial mastery. Within the context of concerns about sacred images articulated in the Diálogos em Roma (1548) of Francisco de Holanda (1517–84), Clovio’s and Sebastiano’s painting techniques are discussed for their ability to approximate divine and semi-divine archetypes while signaling ontological difference and the authority of Rome. The metaphoric potential of Clovio’s and Sebastiano’s technical innovations, one invoking a Lucretian veil of atoms according to Holanda and the other a pictorial touchstone, also reveal the extent to which these artists ambitiously tied theory to practice.
I would like to thank Kim Butler, Evan Davis, Charles Dempsey, Anne Dunlop, Miguel Falomir Faus, Morten Steen Hansen, Anna Kim, Ana Mitrić, Alexander Nagel, Charles Palermo, Patricia Reilly, Chris Wood, and Rebecca Zorach for reading and commenting on versions of this paper since 2005. I would also like to thank my anonymous readers and the editors of Renaissance Quarterly for their meticulous attention and clear improvements to my text. I am particularly indebted to Elizabeth Cropper for both her thinking about the relationship between originality and imitation and for encouraging me to pursue these ideas in the following work. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations are mine. One important exception is that of book 2 of Francisco de Holanda’s text Da Pintura Antigua, or the Diálogos em Roma: Holanda, 1993.