Sebastiano del Piombo, a Venetian painter who,…

Sebastiano del Piombo, a Venetian painter who, during his years in Rome, has assimilated the Roman style as exemplified by Michelangelo, is also a distinguished portraitist: he paints Pope Clement VII in 1531.

The Pope, during his half-year imprisonment in 1527, had grown a full beard as a sign of mourning for the sack of Rome.

This is a violation of Catholic canon law, which requires priests to be clean-shaven; however, it had the precedent of the beard that Pope Julius II had worn for nine months in 1511–12 as a similar sign of mourning for the loss of the papal city of Bologna.

Unlike Julius II, however, Clement VII will keep his beard until his death in 1534.

His example in wearing a beard will be followed by his successor, Paul III, and indeed by twenty-four popes who follow him, down to Innocent XII, who dies in 1700.

Clement VII is thus the unintentional originator of a fashion that will last well over a century.