Domenico Beccafumi (1484 – 1551)

Domenico Beccafumi (1484 – 1551)

Venus and Cupid

Siena, 1519

Oil on wood

71.7 x 13.8 cm

Beccafumi was inspired by classical sculptures of strong male bodies. In this androgynous interpretation of Venus (the Goddess of Love), he has softened the masculine shoulders with round breasts and a feminine head. The acidic yellow and pink dress exposes much of Venus’s torso and legs. She is large and imposing, spreading across the whole width of the panel. The blush of her cheeks is mirrored in that of her son, Cupid, who holds a whirligig toy.

Beccafumi visited Rome between 1510-12, where he encountered the work of Michelangelo (1475-1564). Michelangelo painted women with musculature more commonly associated with men. He famously blurred the gender binary. This panel reveals how Beccafumi was influenced by a more masculine interpretation of the female form.

The panel was the headboard of a bed commissioned to celebrate a wedding between the Petrucci and Piccolomini families in Siena (the Piccolomini family had commissioned the Barber’s Alexander the Great two decades previously). Venus and Cupid were perfect subjects for a marriage celebration as they represent love, desire, and fertility in Greco-Roman mythology. The landscape adds to the lushness of the scene, and Venus swirls her fingers provocatively in a pool of water.

Purchased 1962 (No. 62.6)

Further reading:

Bayer, Andrea, ‘Representation: Art Celebrates Marriage in the Renaissance’, in A Cultural History of Marriage in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age, ed. Joanne Ferraro, London, 2021, pp. 139-159.

Bodart, Diane, Renaissance & Mannerism, New York, 2008, pp. 122-24.

Dubus, Pascale, Domenico Beccafumi, Paris, 1999, p. 7.

Mangus, Donald, ‘Michelangelo and the Female Breast’, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 88/2, 1991, p. 374.

Nelson, Jonathan K, ‘Cancer in Michelangelo’s Night. An Analytical framework of retrospective diagnoses’, in Representing Infirmity: Diseased Bodies in Renaissance Italy, ed. Fredrika Jacobs et al., London, 2020, p. 12

Syson, Luke, Renaissance Siena: Art for a City, (exh. cat., National Gallery, London), London, 2007, pp. 323-35.

Webb, Eleanor, ‘Femmina masculo e masculo femmina: Androgynous Beauty and Ambiguous Sexualities in the Italian Renaissance’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 49, 2018, pp. 103-35.

ONLINE TALKS

Find out more in our online talks:

Audio and transcript available.

28 July 2020

The Green Gallery Project

This artwork was part of a research project into the Barber’s pre-1600 Italian paintings.