Full title | Marcia |
---|---|
Artist | Domenico Beccafumi |
Artist dates | 1484 - 1551 |
Series | Classical Heroines from a Sienese Bedchamber |
Date made | about 1519 |
Medium and support | Oil on canvas and Sundeala board, transferred from wood |
Dimensions | 92.1 x 53.3 cm |
Acquisition credit | Acquired by application of the 1956 Finance Act, 1965 |
Inventory number | NG6369 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
This panel is part of a series of decorations Beccafumi painted for the bedchamber of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci (b.1489), a wealthy merchant and landowner who was nephew of the ruler of the republic of Siena. The decorations were probably made to coincide with Francesco’s marriage to Caterina di Niccolò Mandoli Piccolomini in 1512.
Three of the surviving panels showed Roman heroines – Marcia, Tanaquil and Cornelia. They probably originally decorated the back of a bench seat. Marcia personified the virtues of marital fidelity and wifely obedience as well as fruitful maternity. She was first married to Marcus Porcius Cato and then at his own suggestion married his friend Hortensius. When Hortensius died Marcia returned to Cato. The paintings of the three heroines each contain a Latin couplet in gilt lettering, most likely composed by the scholar who devised the decorative scheme for the bedchamber.
This panel is part of a series Beccafumi painted for the bedchamber of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci, a wealthy merchant and landowner who was nephew of Pandolfo Petrucci, ruler of the republic of Siena. Celebrating themes of love, fertility, and wifely and maternal virtue, the decorations for the bedchamber were probably made to coincide with Francesco’s marriage to Caterina di Niccolò Mandoli Piccolomini in 1512.
Six of the panels survive, though they are in different collections. Three show Roman heroines: Cornelia (Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome), Marcia (National Gallery, London) and Tanaquil (National Gallery, London). Two show Roman festivals: Lupercalia and Cerealia (both Museo di Casa Martelli, Florence). Another painting, Venus and Cupid, is in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham. The paintings of the three heroines and Lupercalia each contain a Latin couplet in gilt lettering.
The three Roman heroines are all exemplars of wifely and maternal virtue. They may have been framed together, forming part of the top of the backboard of a bench seat. Marcia, depicted here, is painted on cherry wood, which suggests that the bench seat was an especially high quality and expensive item in the bedchamber.
The heroines stand in ethereal dawn-lit landscapes and are surrounded by antique architectural fragments. Marcia personified the virtues of marital fidelity and wifely obedience as well as fruitful maternity. The principal source for her story is a passage in Lucan’s epic poem Pharsalia. She was first married to Marcus Porcius Cato and then at his own instigation married his friend Hortensius. When Hortensius died Marcia returned to Cato. Here she raises her left hand in greeting and two fingers of her right hand rest on her belly, perhaps signifying the two husbands whose children she bore. Like the Lupercalia inscription, those of the heroines do not directly quote any known source but contain allusions to multiple classical and early Renaissance texts and were probably invented by a learned advisor.
In the other two panels of heroines, Tanaquil stands by a broken obelisk and Cornelia by a broken column. At the feet of each is a stone tablet inscribed with an identifying Latin couplet written in the first person. Though they do not look directly at the viewer, the women appear to speak, with parted lips and expressive gestures. Tanaquil points to herself and to the explanatory couplet, which translates as: ‘I am Tanaquil. In my prescience I created two kings, first my husband, then my slave.’ Tanaquil promoted her slave Servus Tullius as the next king after her husband’s death.
Learned Cornelia is reading a book, expressing her identity as a cultured and refined woman and an example of maternal dedication. Plutarch’s Lives is the principal source for her legend. She was the daughter of Scipio Africanus who, in an act of magnanimity, promised her to his enemy Tiberius Gracchus. She had twelve children but only three survived – a girl and two boys, known as the Gracchi, whom she famously called her ‘jewels’. As the inscription implies, after her husband’s death she dedicated herself to raising and educating her sons to become patricians of the Roman Republic, and stoically endured the loss of both when they were assassinated.
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Classical Heroines from a Sienese Bedchamber
These two Roman heroines, Marcia and Tanaquil, are part of a series of painted panels that decorated the bedchamber of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci (b. 1489), a wealthy merchant and landowner who was nephew of Pandolfo Petrucci, ruler of the republic of Siena. Celebrating themes of love, fertility, and wifely and maternal virtue, the decorations were probably made to coincide with Francesco’s marriage to Caterina di Niccolò Mandoli Piccolomini in 1512 and completed in about 1519.
Six of the paintings still exist, though they are in different collections. Three show Roman heroines (the one not in the National Gallery depicts Cornelia) and two feature the Roman festivals of Lupercalia and Cerealia, which were associated with male fertility and female fecundity. A painting of Venus and Cupid probably decorated the bedhead. The paintings of the three heroines and Lupercalia each contain a Latin couplet in gilt lettering likely to have been devised by the scholar responsible for the decorative programme.
These two heroines are part of a series of painted panels that decorated the bedchamber of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci (b. 1489), a wealthy merchant and landowner who was nephew of Pandolfo Petrucci, ruler of the republic of Siena. Celebrating themes of love, fertility, and wifely and maternal virtue, the decorations were probably made to coincide with Francesco’s marriage to Caterina di Niccolò Mandoli Piccolomini in 1512. Both families contributed to the costs of the furnishings. The work was finished in about 1519 after the birth of the couple’s first son.
After being toppled from government by Pandolfo’s exiled son, Francesco himself was exiled from Siena on 17 June 1526 and his possessions confiscated. On 26 July 1526 Beccafumi petitioned the Comune to obtain the final payment of 60 ducats for the work he had done for Francesco, which he described as ‘a bed with figures and round posts, with a frieze around the whole room and a bed-chest with pictures painted with fine colours, and all these things decorated with gold and fine blue, and an addition to the bed with figures, and all with gold and blue; for the which work, according to the judgment of a good and true master, he should have better than 180 ducats…’. The gold and blue colours were those of the Petrucci arms. In December 1527, a ruling was passed in Beccafumi’s favour and in February 1528 payment was made.
The decorations were associated with fertility, maternity, childbirth and generation. Six panels still exist, though they are in different collections. Three of them show Roman heroines (the one not in the National Gallery depicts Cornelia, and is in the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome). Two feature the Roman festivals of Lupercalia and Cerealia (both Museo de Casa Martelli, Florence) and one depicts Venus and Cupid (Barber Institute, Birmingham). The paintings of the heroines and Lupercalia each contain a Latin couplet in gilt lettering.
The three Roman heroines are all exemplars of wifely and maternal virtue, representing the stages through which a woman might proceed from beautiful young bride to reflective maternity and then virtuous widowhood. They may have been framed together, forming part of the top of the backboard of a bench. Venus and Cupid retains its original fictive frame and it is likely that it would have been attached to the bedhead. Lupercalia and Cerealia were probably part of a frieze set into wooden panelling on the upper part of the walls above shoulder height. Beccafumi’s description of them surrounding the whole room suggests that there were originally more panels in the frieze. Lupercalia and Cerealia were two Roman festivals described in Ovid’s Fasti associated with male fertility and female fecundity. They appear to be unique as a subject in pictorial art, suggesting that the decorations for the room were part of a scholarly programme. Lupercalia refers to the cave on the Palatine hill in which the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. The suckling twins can be seen at the right of Beccafumi’s painting. In Cerealia, Ceres, the goddess of growing things and of motherly love, is enshrined behind the altar decorated with garlands of corn. The architectural settings of these two paintings seem to reflect those in the furnishings for the famous Borgherini Bedchamber in Florence by Pontormo and others, suggesting that Beccafumi may have known it.


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