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, and 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 (Pinacoteca, Siena), an atypically represented topic, Christ sways in contraposto 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. Stylistically, Beccafumi is among the last in a line of Sienese artists, a medieval believer of miracles awaking in Renaissance reality.
Read more about this topic: Domenico Di Pace Beccafumi
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