Domenico Di Pace Beccafumi

, Fresco (1532-1535), Palazzo Pubblico , Siena .]]

Domenico di Pace Beccafumi ( 1486 – 1551 ) was an Italian Renaissance - Mannerist Painter active predominantly in Siena . He is considered one of the last undiluted representative of the Sienese School of painting.

BIOGRAPHY

Domenico was born the son of Giacomo di Pace, a peasant who worked on the estate of Lorenzo Beccafumi. Seeing his talent for drawing, Lorenzo adopted him, and commended him to learn painting from Mecaro, a lesser Sienese artist. In 1509 he traveled to Rome, but soon returned to Siena, and while the Roman forays of two Sienese artists of roughly his generation ( Il Sodoma and Peruzzi ) had imbued them with elements of the Umbrian-Florentine Classical style, Beccafumi's style remains, in striking ways, provincial. In Siena, he painted religious pieces for churches and of mythological decorations for private patrons, only mildly influenced by the gestured Mannerist trends dominating neighboring Florence. There are medieval eccentricities, sometimes phantasmagoric, superfluous emotional detail and a misty non-linear, often jagged quality to his drawings, with primal tonality to his coloration that separates him from the classic Roman masters.

PAVEMENT OF DUOMO DI SIENA

In addition to painting, he also directed the celebrated pavement of the on his entry into Siena.

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT AND LEGACY

Compared to the equilibrated, geometric, and self-assured Florentine style, the Sienese style of painting, edges into a more irrational and emotionally-unbalanced world. Buildings are often transected, and perspectives awkward. The setting is often hallucinogenic; the colors, discordant. For example, in the ''Nativity'' (San Martino, Siena) hovering angels form an architectural hoop, figures enter from the shadows of a ruined arch. In his annunciation, the virgin resides in a world neither in day or dusk, she and the Angel Gabriel shine while the house is in shambles. In ''Christ in Limbo'' (Siena Pinacoteca), an atypically represented topic, Christ sways in contrapostos as he enters a netherworld of ruins and souls. S.J. Freedberg, compares his vibrant eccentric figures to those of the Florentine Mannerist contemporary Rosso Fiorentino yet more "optical and fluid". While all the elements of the expected religious scenes are here, it is like a play in which all the actors have taken atypical costumes, and forgotten some of their lines.

In Medieval Italy, Siena had been an artistic, economic, and political rival of Florence ; but wars and natural disasters caused a decline by the 15th Century . Beccafumi's style is among the last in a line of Sienese artists, a medieval believer of miracles awaking in Renaissance reality.

PARTIAL ANTHOLOGY OF WORKS

''The Miraculous Communion of Saint Catherine of Siena'' (1513, Getty Museum) {Link without Title}

''Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata'' (1513, Getty Museum) {Link without Title}

''Trinity tryptich'' (1513, Pincoteca, Siena) {Link without Title}

''Marriage of St. Catherine'' (1514-15, Pinacoteca, Siena) {Link without Title}

''St. Paul'' (1515, Museo dell'Opere della Metropolitana, Siena) {Link without Title}

''Tanaquil'' (1519, National Gallery, London) {Link without Title}

''Marcia'' (1519, National Gallery, London) {Link without Title}

''Stigmatization of St. Catherine of Siena ''(1515, Pincoteca, Siena) {Link without Title}

''Self Portrait'' (1520) {Link without Title}

''St. Lucy'' (1521, Pincoteca, Siena) {Link without Title}

''The Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine'' (1521, Hermitage, St. Petersburg) {Link without Title}

Frescoes (Bindi-Segardi Palace, Siena)

Frescoes (Palazzo Publico, Siena) {Link without Title}

''Vision of St. Catherine of Sienna'' (1528, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK)

''The Baptism of Christ'' (1528, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK)

''The Nativity'' (Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA)

''Venus and Cupid with Vulcan'' (1528, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA)

''Holy Family with St. John'' (1530, Uffizi Florence) {Link without Title}

''Holy Family with Saint Anne'' , (private) {Link without Title}

''Escape of Clelia and the Roman Virgins'' (Uffizi Florence)

''Punishment of Dathan'' (Duomo, Pisa)

''Drawing for Christ in Limbo'' (Stolen) {Link without Title}

''Christ in Limbo'' (1535, Pinacoteca, Siena)

''Moses and the Golden Calf'' (1536-7, Duomo, Pisa) {Link without Title}

''Saint Bernard of Siena Preaching'' (1537, Louvre Museum, Paris) {Link without Title}

''Saint Anthony and the Miracle of the Mule'' (1537, Louvre Museum, Paris) {Link without Title}

''Saint Francis receives the stigmata'' (1537, Louvre Museum, Paris) {Link without Title}

''Fall of the Rebel Angels'' (1540s, Pinacoteca, Siena) {Link without Title}

''Birth of the Virgin'' (1543, Accademia, Siena) {Link without Title}

''Annunciation'' (1545-6, Saints Martino and Vittoria, Sarteano) {Link without Title}

''Coronation of the Virgin'' (1540s, Santo Spirito, Siena)

''Madonna with infant and St. John'' (1540, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome) {Link without Title}

''Holy Family with Angels'' (National Gallery, Washington, DC) {Link without Title}

''Holy Family and St. John'' (Alte Pinakotek, Munich, Germany) {Link without Title}

Statues of Angels (1548-50, Presbytery Duomo di Siena) {Link without Title}

Drawing of Abraham {Link without Title}

St. Peter (woodcut, 1547, Cleveland Museum Art) {Link without Title}

Angels drawing (1524-25, San Francisco) {Link without Title}

REFERENCES

''Painting in Italy 1500-1600'', S.J. Freedberg, (Penguin History of Art, 2nd Edition, 1983).

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Domenico Di Pace Beccafumi