Physical description
A woman wearing a red dress with lemon yellow highlights over a blue-green skirt, is seated upon a grassy mound suckling a child at her right breast; another child plays with a small dog at left while two other children play with hobby horses and whirligigs at right, enclosed within a fictive painted frame in blue and gold
Place of Origin
Siena (town), Italy (painted)
Date
ca. 1525 (painted)
Artist/maker
Beccafumi, Domenico, born 1486 - died 1551 (painter (artist))
Materials and Techniques
oil on poplar panel
Dimensions
Diameter: 38 cm estimate
Object history note
This object was part of the collection of Constantine Alexander Ionides, bequeathed to the museum in 1900. It was formerly probably in the Samuel Wooburn collection, sold at Christie's, 25 June 1853, lot 95.
Historical significance: Domenico Beccafumi [also known as Mecherino] (1484?- 1551) was a Sienese painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker and illuminator. He was a maniera painter closely attuned to contemporary developments in Florence and Rome but who continued to paint with a strong sense of the artistic traditions developed during the fourteenth-century 'Golden-Age' of Sienese painting. He painted on panel and in fresco and his mature works are characterised by bold and sometimes acidic colours in pink, green and yellow which later give way to a greater interest in dramatic contrasts of light and shade. His figures demonstrate a natural or exaggerated grace in their poses and often contrast the smooth brilliance of the naked limbs with the intense colour, sinuous folds and decorative line of their draperies. In addition to his paintings and sculptures, Beccafumi made innovative oil-sketches, experimented inventively with copper-plate engraving and woodcuts which he sometimes superimposed to create various different effects and developed a new technique of marble inlay or intarsia for the pavement of Siena Cathedral. He became Siena's primary artist, receiving the most prestigious civic, ecclesiastical and private commissions and ultimately transformed the city with his personal interpretation of the maniera style.
CAI.165 has been cut down and probably originally formed part of a piece of painted furniture. The main figure represents Charity and was likely originally accompanied by roundels representing the two other theological virtues of Hope and Faith. Charity was seen by the medieval church as a means of expressing one's love of God and of one's neighbour, a notion derived from Chapter 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians which describes Christian Charity as Love. Following artistic tradition, Beccafumi depicts Charity wearing a red dress (with yellow in the highlights) and suckling a child at her breast, an allusion to Charity's provision for the needy. The three playful children may be an allusion to a part of the epistle: 'When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.' (1Cor. 13:11)
Historical context note
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy, artists were often commissioned to create painted wooden furnishings for the domestic interior, and particularly for the camera (bedchamber) of wealthy private palaces. Such works were generally commissioned to celebrate a new marriage or the birth of a child and could include a lettiera (bed), spalliera or cornicioni (a painted frieze), a cassapanca (bench-chest) and a set of cassone (marriage chests) among other objects and furnishings. The decoration often included subjects associated with fertility, maternity, childbirth, marriage and fidelity and could include references to the patrons through inclusion of their coat of arms and heraldic colours, or of their personal motto or device.
Descriptive line
Oil painting, 'Charity suckling a Child and Surrounded by Three Children Playing with a Dog and Hobby Horses', Domenico Beccafumi, ca. 1525
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
J. Pope-Hennessy, 'Beccafumi in the V. & A. Museum' in Burlington Magazine vol. 76, no. 445, (April, 1940),pp. 110-123.
Donato Sanminiatelli, Beccafumi, Milano : Bramante, 1967, p. 98, n. 38, fig. 38
Kauffmann, C.M. Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, p. 23-24, cat. no. 18
The following is the full text of the entry:
"Domenico BECCAFUMI (1486 ?-1551)
Sienese School
From Vasari we learn that Beccafumi spent his early years in Siena, worked for a time in Rome and returned to settle in his native city in 1512. It seems likely that he also visited Florence at some date before 1512, but there is no documentary evidence for this early period nor are there any certain paintings before 1513. Except for a visit to Genoa and Pisa c. 1541, he spent the rest of his life in Siena.
Beccafumi's style appears to have been formed under the influence of the great Florentine painters of the early 16th century, in particular Fra Bartolommeo, Piero di Cosimo, Leonardo and Michelangelo, and also of Raphael. But his vision was highly personal and he ranks as one of the greatest of the early Mannerists as well as the last major representative of the Sienese school.
Lit. J. Judey, Domenico Beccafumi, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1932; M. Gibellino-Krasceninnicowa, Il Beccafumi, Siena, 1933; D. Sanminiatelli, Domenico Beccafumi, Milan, 1967.
18
CHARITY SURROUNDED BY CHILDREN
PLAYING WITH DOGS AND HOBBY
HORSES
Panel, square; painting circular
Diam. 15 (38)
Ionides Bequest
CAI.165
The ascription to Beccafumi has never been disputed but the question of the picture's date has been controversial. Venturi (1932) dated it late in the artist's life, Gibellino-Krasceninnicowa (1933) connected it with the Genoese works and assigned it to 1541, whereas John Pope-Hennessy drew attention to the stylistic similarities with the Nativity in San Martino, Siena, and placed it in the middle '20s. This date was accepted by Luisa Becherucci (1944) and by Sanminiatelli (1967), who compared the painting with The Continence of Scipio at Lucca and a tondo of the Virgin and Child with saints in Mexico.
Pope-Hennessy suggested that the figure of Charity is derived from similar figures by Quercia and Francesco da Valdambrino on the Ponte Gaia in Siena, though he points out that she is also similar to Raphael's Madonnas. E. Wind (J. W. C. I., i, 1937-38, p. 322 f.) has shown that this conception of Charity was invented by Michelangelo, adapted and sweetened by Raphael and then used by artists throughout Italy and the rest of Europe.
Condition. Panel repaired.
Prov. Probably in the Samuel Woodburn Collection, sold at Christie's, 25 June 1853, lot 95 'Beccafumi. Charity: a female seated with an infant on her lap and 3 children sporting at her side. Small circle'; Constantine Alexander Ionides, in whose bequest it passed to the Museum in 1900.
Lit. Long, Cat. Ionides Coll., 1925, p. 2; B. Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance, 1932, p. 65; ibid., Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 1968, p. 35; A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, ix, pt 5, 1932, p. 484 f., fig. 278; Gibellino-Krasceninnicowa, op. cit., 1933, pp. 89 f., 211, pl. xxx; O. Sirén in Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, iii, 1934, p. 8, fig. 6; J. Pope-Hennessy, 'Beccafumi in the V. & A. Museum' in Burl. Mag., lxxvi, 1940, p. 110 f.; L. Becherucci, Manieristi toscani, 1944, p. 37; Sanminiatelli, Beccafumi, p. 98, no. 38, fig. 38."
Basil S. Long, Catalogue of the Constantine Alexander Ionides collection.Vol. 1, Paintings in oil, tempera and water-colour, together with certain of the drawings. London : Printed under the authority of the Board of Education, 1925. p. 2.
Bernhard Berenson, Italian pictures of the renaissance Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1932,p. 65.
Bernhard Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance : a list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places. Central Italian and North Italian schools. (London : Phaidon, 1968), p. 35.
A. Venturi. Storia dell'arte italiana. 11. vols. (Milano : U. Hoepli, 1901-1940), vol ix, pt. 5, 1932, p. 484 f., fig. 278.
Maria Gibellino Krasceninnicowa, Il Beccafumi, con prefazione di A. Venturi. Siena, Istituto communale d'arte e di storia, 1933. p. 89 f., 211, pl. xxx.
O. Sirén in Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, iii, 1934, p. 8, fig. 6.
Luisa Becherucci, Manieristi toscani. Bergamo, Istituto italiano d'arti grafiche [1944], p. 37.
Piero Torriti ; contributi critici di Mario Di Giampaolo ... [et al.] Beccafumi. Milano : Electa, c1998. p. 125, P47.
Giuliano Briganti and Edi Baccheschi. L'opera completa del Beccafumi Milano : Rizzoli, 1977, p. 96.
Domenico Beccafumi e il suo tempo Siena, Exh. Cat., Milano : Electa, 1990.
General reference only.
Materials
Oil paint; Poplar
Techniques
Oil painting
Subjects depicted
Landscape; Children; Dog (animal); Charity; Hobby horse; Whirligigs
Categories
Paintings
Collection code
PDP
