The sixteenth century was a critical period both for Spain s formation and for the imperial dominance of her Crown. Spanish monarchs ruled far and wide, spreading agents and culture across Europe and the wider world. Yet in Italy they encountered another culture whose achievements were even prouder and whose aspirations often even grander than their own. Italians, the nominally subaltern group, did not readily accept Spanish dominance and exercised considerable agency over how imperial Spanish identity developed within their borders. In the end Italians views sometimes even shaped how their...

Almost Eternal: Painting on Stone and Material Innovation in Early Modern Europe gathers together an international group of ten scholars, who offer a novel account of the phenomenon of oil painting on stone surfaces in Northern and Southern Europe. This technique was devised in Rome by Sebastiano del Piombo in the early sixteenth century and was practiced until the late seventeenth century. This phenomenon has attracted little attention previously: the volume therefore makes a significant and timely contribution to the field in the light of recent studies of materiality and the rise of...

Sebastiano del Piombo (c.1485-1547) was a close associate and rival of the central artistic figures of the High Renaissance, notably Michelangelo and Raphael. After the death of Raphael and the departure of Michelangelo from Rome, Sebastiano became the dominant artistic personality in the city. Despite being one of most significant artistic figures of the period, he remains the last artist of major importance in the western canon about whom no recent work has been published in English. In this study, Piers Baker-Bates approaches Sebastiano's career through analysis of the patrons he...