Changes with time as a result of Sebastiano s own choice of a non-reflective painting surface are evident in more thinly and directly painted parts of the altarpiece, where the inevitable increase with age in transparency of paint mixtures containing little lead white means that they no longer cover sufficiently the grey-brown priming. As a result the darker colours appear to merge with the priming, becoming 'sunk', and detail can no longer be distinguished. The structure of the rocky outcrop crowned with bushes and trees that rises immediately behind Lazarus and his attendants is now barely legible, and indeed it can easily be mistaken for an enormous tree. In areas that have been abraded or where the paint has broken up as a result of the transfer, for example some of the heads on the right, there is a similar loss of volume and detail