Oeuvres sur Papier - Works on Paper - Jean-Luc Baroni & Marty de Cambiaire - 2022

Domenico di Giacomo di Pace,
dit Domenico Beccafumi
Cortine di Montaperti, près de Sienne 1484/86 – Sienne 1551
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Tête d’enfant
Huile et traits de plume et encre noire, <strong>sur</strong> papier.
280 x 220 mm (11 x 8 10 /16 in.)
Giorgio Vasari donne de Beccafumi l’image d’un
artiste solitaire, quelque peu névrotique, indépendant,
très réservé, mal à l’aise en dehors de sa ville
natale et habitué à travailler seul ; une analyse que
corrobore l’excentricité de son style artistique, décrit
par Vasari comme « capricciosissimo », avec
ses couleurs <strong>sur</strong>réelles, ses figures oscillantes, et ses
paysages oniriques. Bien qu’en effet très personnel
et expressif, Beccafumi, loin de s’isoler, a regardé
les modèles florentins, particulièrement pour la
couleur, et observé la gracieuse tradition siennoise,
tout en s’appliquant à étudier les œuvres de ses
contemporains romains. Vasari rapporte l’histoire,
possiblement apocryphe, de ses débuts d’artiste :
fils d’un berger, il passait son temps à dessiner dans
le sable pendant qu’il gardait les troupeaux. Un
Siennois nommé Beccafumi remarqua son talent,
le prit à son service, lui donna son nom et le plaça
chez un artiste de sa ville 1 . Toujours selon Vasari, il
1. D. Beccafumi, La Sainte Famille avec le petit saint Jean et
l’agneau, galerie Palatine, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Vasari creates an image of Beccafumi as a solitary
and somewhat neurotic person – self contained,
extremely restrained, uncomfortable outside of his
native city and used to working alone; an analysis
which goes well with the perceived eccentricity of
his artistic style, described as capricciosissimo by
Vasari, with its hyper-real colours, swaying figures
and dream-like landscapes. He was indeed a strongly
individual and expressive artist, but far from isolating
himself, Beccafumi looked at Florentine prototypes,
particularly for colour, worked within the Sienese
tradition of sinuous grace and devoted himself to
studying the work of his Roman contemporaries.
Vasari recounts the possibly apocryphal tale of
Beccafumi’s artistic beginnings: son of a shepherd,
he passed his time drawing in the sand, whilst
tending his father’s sheep. His talent was noticed
by a citizen of Siena named Beccafumi, who took
him in as a servant, gave the boy his name and
apprenticed him to a Sienese artist 1 . Vasari records
the apprentice as having copied the altarpieces
of Perugino in Siena and then desiring ‘nothing
so much as to learn’, travelling to Rome to study
the works of Michelangelo and Raphael ‘and the
marvellous statues and sarcophagi of Antiquity’.
Beccafumi spent two years in Rome between 1510
and 1512 and though little work is recorded from
this time, again according to Vasari, he developed
as a ‘bold draughtsman, fertile in invention and a
very pleasing colourist’ and on his return to Siena
studied with and competed against his notorious
compatriot Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called il
Sodoma.
Vasari describes a long series of commissions for
churches and convents, and then for frescoes
illustrating scenes from Roman history for a Signor
Domenico. The excellence of this latter work led to
the most prestigious commission of his career which
was awarded by the Sienese senate to decorate the
Sala del Concistoro vault in the Palazzo Pubblico.
There followed a sojourn in Genoa decorating
the façade of the Palazzo Doria, a commission
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