Beccafumi: Mystical Rapture in a Modern Sense

Beccafumi - The Appearance of St Michael on the Castel Sant’Angelo - c. 1528 - Tempera on panel, 23 x 36 cm - Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (click photo for larger image)Domenico di Pace Beccafumi (c. 1486–1551) was a leader in the post-Italian Renaissance style known as Mannerism. Active predominantly in Siena, Beccafumi is also regarded as one of the last undiluted representatives of the Sienese school of painting—which bears remnants of the decorative qualities and elegant beauty of the late Gothic period.

Beccafumi’s more Mannerist works are characterized by elongated forms, and by the contrapposto revived and advanced by both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Beccafumi used “soft colors, sometimes said to be primal in tone, and a fluid composition” in contrast to many of his contemporaries. The artist’s paintings embody a “jarring, emotional feel” that might stimulate an almost “mystical rapture”.  Beccafume’s brilliant synthesis of the past and present, combined with his own innovations, are part of what render Mannerism a far more modern style than the Baroque that would follow it. 

The panel featured here is one of the surviving two predella paintings which belonged to the altarpiece commissioned for the church of San Niccolò al Carmine, in Siena. The predella depicted scenes from the legend of St Michael. Beccafumi abandoned the use of oils in this work, for the less flexible medium of tempera (by his time considered “old fashioned”). The influence of newly discovered ancient Roman frescoes in the Baths of Titus, which Beccafumi had seen in Rome, might be a possible explanation for this choice.