Last week I had the pleasure of attending the book presentation at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome of The Compass and the Mirror – Sebastiano del Piombo and Michelangelo that I have edited and contributed to. Based on research conducted and insights gained during the 2017 exhibition Michelangelo & Sebastiano that I organised at the National Gallery, the book presents a wide variety of new research on the two artists and the context of their collaboration. It is published by Brepols and you can read more here.

It was a real privilege to be able to organise a book presentation of this sort and to hear the critiques of my esteemed colleagues Professor Alessandro Zuccari of the Sapienze University of Rome and Cecilia Frosinini, faculty member at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. Both had pointed and important remarks that I will take forward in future work. You can see the entire presentation above, but note that the two respondents speak in Italian and only I, out of necessity, respond in English at the end.