BECCAFUMI, Domenico

Beccafumi was the most interesting of the non-Florentine Mannerist painters. His death brought to an end the long, and always emotionally directed, succession of great Sienese painters. His years in Rome from 1510 to 1512 coincided with the period of the Stanze and the Sistine ceiling; yet soon after his return to Siena in 1513 his work displayed characteristics normally associated with the Mannerism of the next decade.

This spectacular and grandiloquent painting was produced during the period Beccafumi was closest to Michelangelo whose Last Judgment was only recently finished when Beccafumi painted this panel. While the elongated muscular nudes recall the nudes of Michelangelo, in terms of appearance there is little formal connection between the two artists. The confusion of the scene suggests that the picture is probably unfinished, and a satisfying solution may have eluded the artist.

Beccafumi received a commission from the Carmelite friars of San Niccolò al Carmine for a panel representing St Michael subduing Lucifer. The artist produced two versions the earlier of which is now in the Pinacoteca, the second is still over a side altar on the south wall of the church of San Niccolò al Carmine, but without its original predella.

The earlier of these two versions of the expulsion of the rebel angels from heaven by the Archangel Michael is at first sight difficult to read: the lower part of the painting is dominated by the tall, elongated figures of three standing nude men. It requires some effort to discern that, within the gloom that surrounds them, other figures are shown in convoluted poses. In the upper part of the painting, encircled by a swirling mass of flying angels, is the arresting figure of Saint Michael. Clad in fanciful antique armour, he holds his sword aloft as a sign of his victory over the vanquished rebel angels. Above him in turn appears an extraordinarily daring representation of God, portrayed in extreme foreshortening. As the deity presiding over this act of heavenly vengeance, he appears as an insubstantial - but certainly visionary - phenomenon.

The second version, by comparison, is much more clearly organised. Here God appears as a monumental figure, seated in jjudgment. The bright red of his voluminous mantle and the golden hemisphere behind him ensure that this figure dominates the composition as a whole. The angelic company is organised into an orderly choir of seated figures surrounding God, with only a few of their companions engaged in expelling the rebel angels. Saint Michael has been placed much lower in the composition and acts as the principal agent between heaven and hell. Although still holding a sword above his head, he has been divested of armour and appears in a pale pink and golden yellow tunic, tied across the chest with pale blue ribbons. Beneath him, the fallen angels recline in a series of subterranean vaults lit by sulphurous light. The devil has been transformed into a snarling monstrous beast that has the appearance of a classical chimaera.

This bozzetto on paper is a study for the head of the youth seated in the foreground on the left of The Reconciliation of Marcus Emilius Lepidus and Fulvius Flaccus, one of the frescoes of the vault of the Sala del Concistoro of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.

The picture shows the scene of Hermathena in one of the oculi on the short side of the vault at the Continence of Scipio. The female figures are Arthemisia and Julia.

The picture shows the octagon with Judgment of Zaleukos. The female figures are Judith and Portia.

Art historians have dated this unfinished work to between the late 1530’s and the early 1540’s on the basis of close stylistic correspondences between it and the Nativity of the Virgin (now in the Pinacoteca in Siena), one of Beccafumi’s most famous paintings. The connections between this painting and the influence of Leonardo da Vinci have been pointed out. In the seventeenth-century Barberini art inventories it was listed as a Madonna Lactans alternately attributed to Leonardo or to one of his followers, an error that indicates the importance of Leonardo as an influence on Beccafumi. The correct attribution appears only in the nineteenth-century inventories (1817).

Late in his career, Beccafumi executed an important series of paintings for the venerable Cathedral of Pisa. Moses and the Golden Calf is disturbing in its originality because the figures have become increasingly thin, diaphanous, and dependent upon silhouette and outline to achieve convincing form. Scale is unconventional and has little significance by normal usage. Moses, holding the tablets, stands in a contorted pose and looks disapprovingly at the miniaturized golden calf nearby. The sharply foreshortened nude youth in the left foreground is difficult to interpret.

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The painter, printmaker, and sculptor Domenico Beccafumi was, alongside Sodoma, Siena’s leading artist in the first half of the fifteenth century, with important public and private commissions in his home town and only occasionally elsewhere. He developed a very individual style, rooted in the tradition of Sienese painting and influenced by contemporary art, especially that of Florence and Rome, which made him perhaps the earliest and certainly one of the most important representatives of Tuscan Mannerism.

With three other paintings, this panel makes up an ideal gallery of virtuous women from ancient times. They were originally in the Ospedale in Siena.

The picture shows the octagon with Scipio Appeals to the Honour of his Soldiers. The female figures are Claudia Quinta and Sulpicia.

The picture shows the octagon with Steadfastness of the Macedonian Boy. The female figures are Camilla and Hypsicratea.

This painting, arguably Beccafumi’s masterpiece, depicts the stigmatization of St Catherine, a Sienese saint. Like St Francis of Assisi, Catherine miraculously receives the signs of the Cross. Catherine appears on bent knee with palms extended, her youthful face fixed upon the crucifix hanging on the wall. In this picture, light acts as a concrete protagonist.

The painting depicts Tanaquil, the wife of king Tarquinius Priscus who prepared the crowning of Servius Tullius. It belongs to the series representing famous women, and executed for the Palazzo Petrucci in Siena.

In the closing years of his career, Beccafumi tended to rein in his more extravagant ideas and also went back to painting calmer compositions that create a sense of silent intimacy. However, he never gave up his unmistakable and extraordinarily rich use of colour nor his love of grading the tone in his pictures from parts that were brilliantly bathed in warm light through to very dark areas.

This panel is one of the surviving two predella paintings which belonged to the altarpiece commissioned for the church of San Niccolò al Carmine, Siena. The predella depicted scenes from the legend of St Michael.

Most unusually, in these panels Beccafumi has abandoned the oil he used for the altarpiece for the old-fashioned, less flexible medium of tempera. It could be the influence of the newly discovered ancient Roman frescoes in the Baths of Titus which Beccafumi had seen in Rome.

In 1518 a new project brought together three Sienese painters, Sodoma, Beccafumi and Girolamo del Pacchia. The new project was a scheme of fresco paintings to embellish the interior of a meeting room belonging to one of the city’s oldest confraternities - the Confraternity of Santa Maria degli Angeli della Veste Nera (Saint Mary of the Angels and of the Black Robes). Founded in honour of the Virgin after 1450 the confraternity also adopted Bernardino as one of their saints, adding his name to the confraternity’s title. For this reason the room that painters decorated is now known as the Oratory of San Bernardino. Designed as a place where the members of the confraternity would meet to conduct both their collective devotions and their administrative business, the Oratory of San Bernardino offers a rare example of an early sixteenth-century decorative ensemble that has survived in almost its original form.

On the side walls of the room there is a series of large-scale fresco paintings separated from one another by pilasters decorated with candelabra motifs. The paintings consist of narrative scenes from the life of the Virgin. Beccafumi had been entrusted with painting the Betrothal and the Dormition.

In Beccafumi’s painting of the Betrothal of the Virgin, his preference for slender, elegant figurative types that are much less amply proportioned than those of Sodoma and Girolamo del Pacchia is apparent. The elaborately decorated marble doorway in the Betrothal of the Virgin, with its striking frieze and pilaster, together with the circular building behind it and to the left, demonstrate the painter’s interest in architecture, both ancient and contemporary, which he could have seen in Rome. Indeed, the circular building bears a strong resemblance to the Tempietto, that was constructed in 1502 by the architect Bramante near the Roman church of San Pietro in Montorio.

The most important of the thematic cycle is the historical one, to which the two ceiling paintings also belong. Each of these paintings has an explanatory inscription which identifies the event depicted and also makes it clear that they are moral examples. The source for these scenes is a compendium of Valerius Maximus, “Factorum and dictorum memorabilium libri.”

The picture shows one of the two central pictures on the ceiling depicting The Continence of Scipio.

This painting was probably intended for a private palace. It shows an event in the Second Punic War: after Scipio Africanus’s capture of Carthago Nova, the exceptionally beautiful virgin betrothed to the Celtiberian prince Allucius, fell into the hands of the Romans. Scipio allowed her to return untouched to her family. The panel depicts the moment when the young general announces her release to the prince kneeling before him, and in return asks simply that Allucius become a friend of Rome.

The picture shows the scene of The Flight of Aeneas in one of the oculi on the short side of the vault at the Continence of Scipio. The female figures are Tuccia and Penelope.

Domenico Beccafumi was one of the first and most important Tuscan artists to work in the Mannerist style. He began his career painting in a style close to artists of the turn of the century such as Fra Bartolomeo and Perugino. After a period in Rome his work shows the influence of Michelangelo and Raphael.

This work is an early example of the Mannerist style of the 1530s and 1540s. The composition is based on a triangular structure, marked out by the Virgin and Child. Beccafumi uses typical Mannerist colours in the lime green and blue of the Virgin’s robe, as well as the pale pink other dress and the touches of orange. Also following the pale colour scheme, the artist has made the Virgin’s hair blonde. The two children, Christ and the St John the Baptist, are depicted as classical putti.

A very important Sienese painter who, through the influence of Michelangelo, and of Leonardo and Raphael through the medium of Sodoma, and not without a knowledge of the northerners, achieves a highly original stylistic conception, which is among the most fanciful of the whole Mannerism. It is based upon a liquid colouring which melts under the impact of light and upon an undulating and serpentine linearism.

This panel is one of the surviving two predella paintings which belonged to the altarpiece commissioned for the church of San Niccolò al Carmine, Siena. The predella depicted scenes from the legend of St Michael.

Most unusually, in these panels Beccafumi has abandoned the oil he used for the altarpiece for the old-fashioned, less flexible medium of tempera. It could be the influence of the newly discovered ancient Roman frescoes in the Baths of Titus which Beccafumi had seen in Rome.

The picture shows the octagon with The Oath of Attilius Regulus. The female figures are Dido and Esther.

On 5 April 1529 Beccafumi was commissioned to paint the ceiling of a large room on the first floor of the Palazzo Pubblico. Now known as the Sala del Concistoro, it appears that it became the meeting place of this magistracy only after the remodelling of the Palazzo Pubblico in the seventeenth century. Designated as the sala dipinta (the ‘painted room’) on an early seventeenth- century plan of the building, it is likely that it was originally designed as a room for the reception of foreign embassies and similar ceremonial events. Despite being required to complete the work within eighteen months and receiving payments for it in May and August 1530 and October 1532, Beccafumi left this elaborate scheme of painting unfinished in order to go to work for another patron, Andrea Doria, in Genoa. He then resumed the project in 1534, receiving final payment for it on 21 April 1535. Thus, a project that was meant to have taken only eighteen months in fact took six years to complete.

Beccafumi’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sala del Concistoro are complex in their subject matter and imagery. The ceiling is comprised of a large rectangular centrepiece surrounded on all four sides by a deep cove. The subjects of the paintings on the cove of the ceiling are all drawn directly from the Roman author Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Deeds and Sayings.

The painting of the Reconciliation of Marcus Emilius Lepidus and Fulvius Flaccus dominates the west side of the ceiling. Representing the peace made between a powerful consul and his principal enemy, the subject was chosen to illustrate a notable act of benevolence and good will in ancient Roman history. Set in an orderly and impressive rendition of the Campo Marzio in Rome, with temples and other ancient civic buildings in the background, the two protagonists are represented embracing one another in a dignified manner. Other figures witness this scene including two animated youths to the left of the kneeling consuls. A bearded man on the extreme right looks directly out towards the spectator and may be a portrait of the painter himself. If this is the case, it appears that this particular painting was of some significance for the scheme as a whole. It is the first painting to draw one’s attention as one enters the room since it lies directly opposite the entrance door. In colour, perspective and luminosity, it also functions as an eye- catching painting within the generally rich embellishment of the ceiling as whole.

In many ways, the ceiling of the Sala del Concistoro represents the culmination of sixteenth-century Sienese civic art. Although completed by 1535 and therefore twenty years before the fall of the Sienese republic, it provides another compelling demonstration of the traditional yet also innovatory characteristics of Sienese painting at that time.

In a theme that was majestically treated by Masaccio a century earlier, Beccafumi does not retain an orderly sense of scale for his figures, so that God the Father and the crucified Christ are much smaller in relation to the side saints (Sts Cosmas and John the Baptist at left, Sts John the Evangelist and Damian at right). All of his figures seem to deny pure volumetric presence, this despite the fact that Beccafumi was accomplished both as a bronze sculptor and painter.

Oddly enough, Beccafumi’s interpretation of this noble theme, masterfully rendered by Masaccio and Andrea del Castagno a century before, is here spatially compressed. Even where his figural modelling implies volume, the impression is quickly suppressed. An indication of this Sienese master’s individualism which often borders on eccentricity may be read in the interaction of the hands. Jesus’ hands are flattened on the Cross, while God’s appear almost directly behind them, as if they were once and will again be the same hands.

The picture shows one of the long sides of the vault with the following depictions: The Oath of Attilius Regulus (left) and Judgment of Zaleukos (right) in the two octagons, Prometheus Forms Man (left), Three Graces (centre), and Judgment of Paris (right) in the three oculi. The six female figures around the oculi are (from left to right) Sophonisbe, Dido, Esther, Judith, Portia, unidentified.

The picture shows one of the long sides of the vault with the following depictions: Scipio Appeals to the Honour of his Soldiers (left) and Steadfastness of the Macedonian Boy (right) in the two octagons, Fall of the Giants (left), Deucalion Flood (centre), and Deucalion and Pyrrha (right) in the three oculi. The six female figures around the oculi are (from left to right) unidentified, Claudia Quinta, Sulpicia, Camilla, Hypsicratea, unidentified.

The picture shows the scene of Cato’s Suicide in one of the six octagons surrounding the central scenes. To the left and right in the oculi are Hercules at the Crossroads and Athena and Poseidon, respectively. The female figures are (from left to right) Lucretia, Pero, Eva, unidentified.

Frescoes in the oratories of brotherhoods are found throughout Italy. In 1516 to 1518 the Sienese brotherhood of Mary and Bernardino commissioned Girolamo del Pacchia, Sodoma, and Domenico Beccafumi to fresco the walls of their oratory with a cycle on the life of Mary, The artists painted two stories each: Pacchia, the Birth of Mary and the Annunciation; Sodoma, the Presentation of the Virgin and the Coronation of Mary; and Beccafumi, the Betrothal of Mary and the Death of the Virgin. The missing scenes on the right-hand longitudinal wall, the Visitation and the Assumption of the Virgin were not painted by Sodoma until the late 1520s, and Baccafumi’s altarpiece still later, between 1535 and 1537. The cycle begins on the left wall (The Birth of Mary to THe Betrothal of Mary), and continues above the altar wall (Annunciation) and the right longitudinal wall (Visitation to Assumption of the Virgin) through the second of the short walls (The Coronation of Mary). In addition to the stories from the life of Mary, there are four frescoed standing figures of Franciscan saints in the corners of the longitudinal walls.

The Palazzo Venturi (later Palazzo Agostini then Palazzo Casini-Casuccini, now Palazzo Bindi Sergardi) is a palace in the Via dei Pellegrini, just a few steps from the Campo in Siena. Beccafumi painted here, on the ceiling in a room on the second floor, a fresco cycle with eight scenes of exemplary deeds of ancient heroes, ten medallions with scenes from ancient mythology and history, as well as twenty famous women of antiquity. The room now belongs to a private apartment.

The commission came from a member of the Venturi family. It is not clear whether Beccafumi was originally supposed to paint the walls, or at least the lunettes, in addition to the ceiling frescoes visible today. Vasari, who was the first to describe and praise the frescoes in his Vite (1550), named Marcello Agostini as the owner of the palace.

The form of the ceiling vault, with three spandrels on the long walls and two on the short ones, suggested an articulation based on a type familiar to Beccafumi from Rome, where he had studied the frescoes in the Villa Farnesina.

Besides the two central paintings there are three cycles with different themes, each of which is meant to be observed separately: ancient history in the six octagons that surround the central paintings, ten mythological depictions in the oculi, and twenty women in the lower corners of the spandrels, several of whom immediately recognizable as famous heroines of antiquity.

The most important of the thematic cycle is the historical one, to which the two ceiling paintings also belong. Each of these paintings has an explanatory inscription which identifies the event depicted and also makes it clear that they are moral examples. The source for these scenes is a compendium of Valerius Maximus, “Factorum and dictorum memorabilium libri.”

The picture shows one of the two central pictures on the ceiling depicting Zeuxis and the Maidens of Croton.