The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Siena

Domenico Beccafumi was among the most inventive, experimental painters of the early sixteenth century and, together with Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (known as Sodoma) and Baldassare Peruzzi, a leading artistic figure in High Renaissance Siena. He was praised by the sixteenth-century biographer Giorgio Vasari as ‘rarissimo pittore’ (‘very rare painter’) and ‘pittor eccellente’ (‘excellent painter’). Beccafumi was not only a great painter: he was a prolific draughtsman and sculptor, responsible, amongst other things, for designing the inlaid marble paving of Siena Cathedral. Beccafumi took up printmaking late in his career and is famed for his chiaroscuro woodcuts, which he not only designed but cut himself. Beccafumi’s paintings are characterised by a rich, vibrant palette, animated brushwork that creates a soft sfumato effect and a palpable tension between the figures, underscoring his role as an early exponent of Mannerism. His idiosyncratic style has allowed art historians to assemble an impressive body of work, despite none of his paintings being signed or dated.

The son of a tenant farmer, the artist was born Domenico di Giacomo di Pace. He took the name ‘Beccafumi’ from a wealthy Sienese patron, Lorenzo di Andrea Beccafumi, who supported him during his early career. According to Vasari, Beccafumi travelled as a young man to Rome, where he studied the works of Michelangelo and Raphael as well as the many treasures of antiquity that were to be found there. Beccafumi’s Roman stay is believed to have lasted approximately two years and, on his return to his native Siena, he was one of the few Tuscan artists to have seen the Sistine ceiling complete, as well as Raphael's frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura and Peruzzi's decoration of the Villa Farnesina. Beccafumi settled for the rest of his life in Siena, where he established a workshop, but he made frequent visits to Florence, spent extended periods in Rome and worked for short stints in Genoa and Pisa in the 1530s.

Devotional panels such as this, featuring the Madonna and Child alongside various saints, sometimes in a tondo format, constitute a significant part of Beccafumi’s œuvre. Here, the Madonna is placed centrally, flanked by Saints Joseph and Catherine, with all three set behind a parapet on which the Christ Child and Baptist are dynamically posed, engaged in a fidgety embrace. The inclusion of Siena’s name saint, Catherine, and the somewhat archaic arrangement of three figures in a line, set within a shallow space, harks back to Sienese Quattrocento models. The nervous energy of the two children, however, introduces a powerful naturalism and lively atmosphere that is entirely characteristic of Beccafumi’s art. The Christ Child sits on a bright yellow cushion, and Beccafumi employs his preferred combination of primary colours, with the Virgin wearing a blue mantle with green revers, as seen in the resplendent tondo in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid (fig. 1).

The present painting was formerly attributed to Fra Bartolommeo (1472?-1517). Crowe and Cavalcaselle were the first to recognise the work as being ‘a fine approximation by the Siennese [sic] Beccafumi to the manner of the Frate [Fra Bartolomeo]; sweet in colour and very freely handled’ (op. cit., 1866). The attribution to Beccafumi was taken up by all subsequent writers – including Pietro Torriti in his 1998 catalogue raisonné – and the panel has been dated to circa 1516-17 almost unanimously, with the exception of Andrea Staderini who has proposed a slightly earlier date of execution circa 1515 (op. cit.).

A note on the provenance:

Beccafumi’s painting is first recorded in the possession of the Earls Cowper in the early nineteenth century and later hung at Panshanger, in Hertfordshire, in what was considered one of the finest collections in Britain. The nucleus was formed by George Nassau Clavering-Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper, who had left England for Italy in 1757 and settled in Florence three years later. The 3rd Earl amassed a notable collection of old masters, in which he was advised by Johann Zoffany, that included two early Raphaels, ‘The Small Cowper Madonna’ and ‘The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna’ (both Washington, National Gallery of Art), Pontormo’s three Scenes from the Story of Joseph (London, National Gallery) and Fra Bartolommeo’s masterful Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum). It has always been stated that Beccafumi’s Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Siena was acquired by the 3rd Earl in Italy, but it is not specifically mentioned in any of the fragmentary eighteenth-century sources relating to his collection, which include partial inventories and diary entries by visitors to his Florentine residence. It seems far more likely that it was acquired by Peter Leopold Louis Francis Nassau Clavering-Cowper, 5th Earl Cowper (1778-1837), and added to the collection amassed by his father, the 3rd Earl, which was particularly strong in Florentine sixteenth-century works.

Indeed, Beccafumi’s painting is first recorded in an inventory of circa 1810, listing the pictures in the 5th Earl’s London townhouse in George Street, Hanover Square, where it is attributed to Fra Bartolommeo (Hertfordshire Record Office, D/EP F/4228H, no. 16; see Belsey, op. cit., 1981). The painting was later moved to Panshanger in Hertfordshire, the Cowper family seat, which was rebuilt by the 5th Earl at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The new house, featuring a purpose-built picture gallery illuminated by three skylights and a south-facing single bay window, was designed to accommodate and display the collections that had previously been dispersed across different residences. The English poet Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) declared Panshanger to contain ‘perhaps the choicest private collection in this country’ (Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, London, 1856, p. 153) and both Passavant and Waagen made a point of visiting, though Beccafumi’s painting is not mentioned in either of their summary descriptions of paintings (1836; and 1838, 1854, and 1857, respectively). The present work was certainly at Panshanger by the time the 6th Earl succeeded his father, in 1837, and remained there until the mid-twentieth century, taking pride of place in the Picture Gallery (fig. 2). Designed by the architect William Atkinson and completed by 1822, the grand neoclassical Picture Gallery has been described as ‘one of the grandest of its kind in Regency Britain’ (Humfrey, op. cit., 2025, p. 183). Beccafumi’s painting hung in a prominent position, next to Rembrandt’s Portrait of Frederick Rihel on Horseback (now London, National Gallery). Unlike some of the other smaller pictures on the north wall of the Picture Gallery, which were placed in a symmetrical three-tier arrangement, Beccafumi’s painting appears to have remained in its original position, initially hung as a ‘pendant’ to Raphael’s ‘Small Cowper Madonna’ (now in Washington); as evidenced by a photograph of around 1860, taken by Lady Frances Cowper, and a diagram of the Picture Gallery from circa 1900 in the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (Humfrey, op. cit., 2023, figs. 52 and 5, respectively). The Cowper collection passed by inheritance to Ethel, Lady Desborough and was partly dispersed after her death in 1952. All the major works in the collection were divided between her two daughters, the Hon. Lady Salmon and Viscountess Gage. This picture by Beccafumi was among them, passing to Lady Salmond and subsequently being sold by her at Christie's in 1972.

We are grateful to Peter Humfrey for his help in clarifying the early provenance of this work.