Domenico Beccafumi

Born Cortine in Valdibiana Montaperti, 1484; died Siena, between Jan and May 1551.

Italian painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker and illuminator. He was one of the protagonists, perhaps even the most precocious, of Tuscan Mannerism, which he practised with a strong sense of his Sienese artistic background but at the same time with an awareness of contemporary developments in Florence and Rome. He responded to the new demand for feeling and fantasy while retaining the formal language of the early 16th century. None of Beccafumi’s works is signed or dated, but his highly personal maniera has facilitated almost unanimous agreement regarding the definition of his corpus and the principal areas of influence on it. However, some questions concerning the circumstances of his early career and the choices available to him remain unanswered. The more extreme forms of Beccafumi’s reckless experimentation underwent a critical reappraisal only in the later 20th century.

1. To 1517.

The primary sources of information concerning Beccafumi are Vasari’s biography (1568) and archival findings, mostly 19th century, relating to the artist. Vasari, although a direct acquaintance of Beccafumi in his last years and in a position to gather information from mutual friends, was, predictably, unreliable in regard to his early career. According to Vasari, Mecherino, the son of a poor farmer named Giacomo di Pace, became the protégé of Lorenzo Beccafumi, a rich Sienese citizen from whom he took his name and who apprenticed the boy to a minor Sienese painter. After seeing some work by Perugino in Siena, Beccafumi left for Rome, where he studied the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. Encouraged by the success of his fellow citizen Sodoma, Beccafumi returned to Siena. A document of 1507 (Moscadelli), in which Beccafumi is described as a Sienese painter, records the sale of a piece of land belonging to him, suggesting that his career was already established at this early date and that his origins were less humble than Vasari indicated. A further reference for this early activity is a Virgin and Child with St John (Berlin, Gemäldegal.).

The earliest documented works by Beccafumi are the altarpiece triptych of the chapel dedicated to the Madonna del Manto in the Ospedale di S Maria della Scala, Siena, depicting the Trinity with SS Cosmos, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and Damian (1513; Siena, Pin. N.), and the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the only surviving part of the frescoes in the same chapel, datable after the triptych on stylistic grounds. They display a highly personal style influenced principally by the art of Florence, where the works of Fra Bartolommeo, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael had already laid the foundation for the maniera moderna before the end of the first decade of the 16th century. The effects of Beccafumi’s sojourn in Rome are hardly perceptible, except for the parallel in the Trinity between Raphael’s earliest Roman work and the agitated tangle of angels that supports the Trinity. Also, the tightly compressed perspectival framing of the lateral saints in a narrow, dark interior recalls the work of Bramantino, who was in Rome in 1508–9. The influence of Sodoma, though much filtered, is perceptible in these works by Beccafumi, and it may be argued that he, rather than Perugino, was the focus of Beccafumi’s early interests.

Sodoma departed for Rome in 1508 (before Raphael’s arrival there), after being recommended to Julius II by Sigismondo Chigi when the Pope was planning the decoration of the new rooms in the Vatican Palace. The suggestion that Beccafumi may have followed him immediately is supported by the fact that both artists acquired skill in painting façades with all’antica monochrome decoration (an activity cultivated by Baldassare Peruzzi) and by the existence of a drawing (c. 1513; London, BM) for the façade of the Palazzo Borghesi alla Postierla, Siena (a commission mentioned by Vasari), which is very close to the work of Sodoma and Peruzzi.

The effect of Beccafumi’s Roman experience on his early work was limited compared to the influence gained through his contact with Florence, the city in which Lorenzo Beccafumi attended to the interests of the Sienese Republic. This is apparent in a number of works that could, at least in part, precede that for the chapel of the Madonna del Manto and justify, on the basis of their quality, that important commission being given to Beccafumi by Pandolfo Petrucci, who planned the decoration not long before his death in 1512. The two versions of the Virgin and Child (both c. 1514; Siena Pin. N.) and the Holy Family (c. 1513–14; Pesaro, Mus. Civ.) attempt to assimilate, still through Sodoma, the innovations of Leonardo’s last Florentine works. In these paintings, as in the triptych of the Trinity, the subtle and enveloping vibration of the light is already central to Beccafumi’s art: it soaks the colour, invests the forms with a restless animation and confers a visionary instability on the image. In the badly preserved frescoed lunette of the Meeting at the Golden Gate in the chapel, remarkable in its almost modern freedom of handling, this intense play of light breaks up the classically conceived compositional scheme and manipulates it to convey the powerful emotive tension visible on the faces of the principal figures. In this work Beccafumi embarked, well before Rosso Fiorentino and Pontormo, on the road to Mannerist freedom, understood in the positive sense as the intellectual re-elaboration and reinvention of the formal and pictorial innovations that had accumulated in Florence in the first decade of the 16th century (see Mannerism).

The altarpiece depicting the Stigmatization of St Catherine with SS Benedict and Jerome (1514–15; Siena, Pin. N.) recalls the altarpieces executed by Fra Bartolommeo in Lucca (God the Father with SS Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Siena, 1509, Lucca, Villa Guinigi; Virgin and Child with SS Stephen and John the Baptist, 1509, Lucca Cathedral), notwithstanding Beccafumi’s use of fleeting shadows among the arches of the architectural framework and on the geometric design of the floor. The profile of the ecstatic saint stands out against a supernatural blaze that enfolds the distant landscape. Beccafumi’s knowledge of the Lucca paintings implies that he would also have encountered the eccentric inventions of Amico Aspertini in S Frediano, Lucca. Though tied to a more archaic cultural environment, these works help to explain the compositional freedom and narrative humour that characterize Beccafumi’s St Paul Enthroned (1516–17; Siena, Mus. Opera Duomo). Close in date to these new pictorial experiments is the splendid tondo of the Holy Family (Munich, Alte Pin.), which reformulates ideas drawn from the most fluid and complicated Sienese Gothic tradition by integrating the circular format of the panel with the curvature of the figures. Beccafumi’s painting also challenges Michelangelo in the uncompromising pose of St Joseph, shown with his back towards the viewer.

2. 1518–27.

Two frescoes executed by Beccafumi for the oratory of S Bernardino, Siena (both in situ), and paid for at the end of 1518, represent a change in style. In the Death of the Virgin the broader and more majestic masses of the figures are almost overwhelmed by the dominant motif of the open-armed Christ gliding towards the recumbent body of his mother amid rays of light that reflect off the onlookers and intensify the sense of confused and restless animation communicated by their looks and gestures. The Marriage of the Virgin, probably the earlier of the two, shows signs of a recent encounter with Roman culture. The idealized grace and sophistication of the women who answer the call of the trumpeters, the curly hair of the youths and the buildings adorned all’antica with friezes and grotesque decorations recall the elegance of the decorations planned for Agostino Chigi’s Villa Farnesina, built by Peruzzi. Some scholars have claimed to identify, with varying degrees of certainty, the hand of Beccafumi in the grotesque decorations of the pilaster strips that divide the wall in the Farnesina on which Raphael’s Galatea is painted. The same spirit pervades the series of panel paintings executed by Beccafumi c. 1519, which perhaps formed part of the decoration of the bedroom of Francesco Petrucci (1488–after 1526): the Venus (U. Birmingham, Barber Inst.), Tanaquil and Marcia (both London, N.G.) and Cornelia (Rome, Gal. Doria–Pamphili) and the two panels representing the Feast of Lupercalia and the Cult of Vesta (both Florence, Martelli priv. col.).

Beccafumi’s ability to keep abreast of artistic developments in Rome, albeit in a highly personal manner, is not supported by documented visits to the city. However, it is reasonable to assume that, in addition to the influence of such other artists as Sodoma or Bartolomeo di David (1482–1545/6), these visits did take place. In the scenes from the Story of Elijah and Ahab for the marble hexagons of the pavement of Siena Cathedral, on which Beccafumi began to work in 1519, the disposition and attitudes of the eccentrically elongated figures allude to the rhythmic cadences of Raphael’s tapestry cartoons depicting the Acts of the Apostles (c. 1516; London, V&A; see ). In the long frieze on the cathedral pavement showing Moses Striking the Rock, designed in 1525, the large number of figures in a restricted space, animated and sustained by means of a contrasting monochrome scheme, recalls his passion for the Antique and the style of Polidoro da Caravaggio. The entrusting to Beccafumi of the completion of this prestigious public commission confirmed his pre-eminent position in Siena, notwithstanding Sodoma’s continued presence. Beccafumi was engaged on this undertaking, which received unstinting praise from Vasari, for almost three decades.

Like the Moses frieze, the celebrated ceiling fresco that Beccafumi executed (1519) in one of the rooms of the Palazzo Venturi, Siena (later Palazzo Bindi–Sergardi), also reflected developments in Roman art. Specifically it shows the influence of the works of the more independent pupils of Raphael, particularly Perino del Vaga, through the brilliant decorative subdivision of the surface and the freedom of handling, which results in the most unusual effects of light and colour. Greek and Roman stories celebrating civic virtues, drawn from the repertory of Valerius Maximus’ Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri, are represented in a fantastic and spirited key with the occasional ironic accent in the tondi on the ceiling spandrels. The intensely vibrating light relates this work to the Nativity (c. 1522; Siena, S Martino) where, again, a connection with Perino del Vaga (who is known to have sought a temporary refuge in Siena from the plague) is evident in the nervous and refined grace of the protagonists and in the romantic presence of the ruined arch.

Suggestions of the more agitated side of Florentine Mannerism, precipitated by the presence of Michelangelo, can be found a little later in the first, unfinished version of the Fall of the Rebel Angels (c. 1524; Siena, Pin. N.), executed for S Niccolò del Carmine, Siena. The movement in the scene appears convulsed in the vibrant light of the celestial radiance and the infernal flames that wrest silhouettes of entangled figures from the darkness and project the foreshortened nudes into the foreground. This impressive panel is related, through its disconcerting use of light, to the compositionally more conservative altarpiece depicting the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (1528; Siena, Monte Paschi). A kind of synthesis of the two tendencies takes place in the more balanced construction of the second version of the Fall of the Rebel Angels executed for the Carmine (c. 1528; in situ), which, with its emphatically plastic figures strikingly outlined against the light, recalls Peruzzi, who, fleeing the Sack of Rome (1527), had returned to Siena.

3. After 1527.

Between 1529 and 1532 and, after a break, again in 1535, Beccafumi decorated the walls and ceiling of the Sala del Concistoro in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (see [not available online]). The influence of Peruzzi is discernible in the illusionistic ceiling architecture created through the marked projection of the three painted cornices and the framework dividing up the ceiling space. Allegories and exemplary episodes from ancient history, drawn once again from Valerius Maximus, are represented within a rigorous scheme of tondi, octagons and rectangles. The gestures and poses of the figures strongly echo those of Michelangelo. The scenes are alternately set against the open sky within daringly foreshortened settings or depicted as tapestries between decorative borders. The brilliant luminosity of Beccafumi’s chromatic harmonies intensifies the expressiveness of certain faces, executed from drawings of great quality (exh. cat. 1990, pp. 452–7, nos 117–23). This imposing formal arrangement is even more successfully repeated in the scenes depicting Moses on Mt Sinai (1531) on the pavement of Siena Cathedral, and it perhaps also characterized Beccafumi’s work (destr.) in the Genoese palace of Andrea I Doria (i), where Perino del Vaga also worked after the Sack of Rome.

Beccafumi was freed from the constricting rhythms of this compositional style in the Descent into Limbo (c. 1536; Siena, Pin. N.) and the brilliantly lit panels for the apse of Pisa Cathedral, depicting the Punishment of Korah, Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law and the Four Evangelists. These panels were executed in Siena between 1537 and 1538 and were then sent to Pisa. Among the memorable works that Beccafumi produced in the last decade of his activity are the diaphanous and restless frescoes in the apse of Siena Cathedral depicting scenes from the New Testament (1535–44), inspired by the perspective ideas of Peruzzi, the Annunciation (1546; Sarteano, SS Martino e Vittoria) and the Sacrifice of Isaac (1547), with its great landscape of airy luminosity and pictorial richness—the last of the scenes he designed for the pavement of Siena Cathedral.

Almost at the end of his life, between 1547 and 1551, Beccafumi was entrusted with one more major task: a series of eight bronze angels for the piers of the nave of Siena Cathedral, facing the altar . Beccafumi wanted personally to oversee their casting. The supple gracefulness of the poses, the sharp contrasts between the smooth brilliance of the naked parts and the intense pictorial vibration created by the minute folds in the fine draperies that cling to the rounded bodies combine, while still looking back to Francesco di Giorgio Martini and il Vecchietta, to produce once more a work of the great maniera moderna. As well as his activities in painting and sculpture, Beccafumi made occasional but interesting forays into the field of engraving and woodcuts (e.g. the series of ten woodcuts illustrating the Practice of Alchemy) in which he sometimes combined the impressions from various blocks. Four folios of a manuscript (Siena, Osp. S Maria della Scala) contain illuminations by Beccafumi, depicting the Resurrection, Pentecost, the Nativity and the Miracle of the Snow, datable to c. 1520.

Fiorella Sricchia Santoro. "Beccafumi, Domenico." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T007187 (accessed March 22, 2012).