Birth of the Virgin

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.