Domenico Beccafumi

Domenico Beccafumi is a Sienese Mannerist painter and sculptor whose visionary and experimental work represents the most original and fantastic expression of Mannerism outside Florence and Rome. Trained in Rome where he discovers Michelangelo and Raphael, he returns to Siena where he develops a personal style characterized by acid and unreal colors, unbalanced compositions, figures with elongated proportions and supernatural light that transforms his religious scenes into hallucinatory visions. His masterpiece, the Fall of the Rebel Angels, reveals his extraordinary imagination capable of creating swirling compositions where demonic and celestial bodies intermingle in a luminous chaos with greenish and sulfurous tonalities that prefigure Expressionism. His marble pavements for the floor of Siena Cathedral demonstrate his exceptional technical mastery and his dramatic sense of chiaroscuro. Painter of mystical altarpieces and enigmatic mythological scenes, he creates a personal dreamlike universe that escapes classical conventions to explore territories of the strange and the sublime. His influence on the development of late Mannerism and his anticipation of Baroque sensibilities make him one of the most singular artists of the Cinquecento.