Domenico Beccafumi Cortine in Valdibiana Montaperti 1484 - 1551 Siena

Paolino Santini, Villa Camigliano (near Lucca), by whom acquired in Florence in 1793 (according to Romagnoli, under Literature);
Thence by descent to Vittoria Santini Torrigiani, Villa Camigliano (near Lucca), until after 1843;
Thence by descent to the Marchesi Torrigiani, Palazzo Torrigiani, Florence, by September 1856 (when seen hanging in his home by Otto Mündler, see below) and still in 1932;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 27 June 1962, lot 71, for £3,500 to Jervons;
Serrous collection;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 3 July 1963, lot 93, for £1,800 to Mastern;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 1967, lot 54, for £1,600 to Getty;
J. Paul Getty, Sutton Place Manor, near Guildford (Surrey), by whom bequeathed to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, in 1978;
De-accessioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum in a sale, New York, Christie's, 21 May 1992, lot 13, where acquired by the present owner.

E. Romagnoli, Biografia cronologica de' Bellartisti senesi, MS L.II.1-13 in the Biblioteca Comunale, Siena, vol. VI, before 1835, p. 638 (ed. Florence 1976, p. 535);
A. Mazzarosa, Guida di Lucca, 1843 (republished in 1974), p. 169 (as Baldassare Peruzzi);
O. Mündler, Diaries, 23 September 1856, f.64v;
B. Berenson, Central Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, New York/ London 1897, pp. 133 and 194;
E. Jacobsen, Sodoma und das Cinquecento in Siena, Strasbourg 1910, p. 105;
L. Dami, "Domenico Beccafumi", in Bollettino d'Arte, vol. XIII, 1919, p. 14, footnote 3 (as datable to just before 1530);
A. Venturi, Storia dell'Arte Italiana, vol. IX, part V, Milan 1932, p. 499;
D. Sanminiatelli, Domenico Beccafumi, Milan 1967, p. 99, no. 40;
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, London 1968, vol. I, p. 35;
E. Bacceschi, L'opera completa del Beccafumi, Milan 1977, p. 100, no. 90, reproduced on p. 98;
O. Mündler, "The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler: 1855-1858", in The Walpole Society, no. 51, 1985, pp. 132 and 259;
M. Folchi, in P. Torriti ed., Beccafumi, Milan 1998, p. 137, cat. no. P61, reproduced.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a thick poplar panel with a diagonal grain. Behind there are three inset horizontal bands of wood presumably replacing three original cross bars, and three diagonal inserts are presumably supporting the original joints. There are one or two other brief cracks along the grain, and a shortish (about six inches) stretch of accentuated old craquelure alongside the end of the joint at top centre left although this is not at all insecure. The careful carpentry appears to have secured the joints, although there are very occasional minute lost flakes in the narrow lines of filling, but the panel seems generally to have remained quite flat with scarcely any sign of flaking in the original paint, and despite the unorthodox alignment of the wood the painting appears to have had a stable and uneventful early life and remains is fine secure condition overall, and has no accidental damage. The restoration is as comparatively recent as the panel work, and apart from the narrow lines of retouching along the joints there is just a scattering of little surface touches: on the foreground ledge and in the deeper blue nearby, in the shadowy leg of Christ, the shadowy hand of St. John and the shadows under Christ's raised arm. Also a few small retouchings on St. John's shoulder and one by his mouth, one horizontal scratch across the lower forefinger of the Madonna, retouched diagonals crossing the shoulder and side of Christ's face, with a little by His lower fingers. One other retouching is around the Madonna's fingers to mute pentimenti, and other pentimenti can be seen in many places around the central hands, in Christ's hands and by His chin, by His arm and leg and toes, and changes to the eyes and mouth of St John as well as his hand. Overall the painting is remarkably undamaged with a fine, intact paint surface. Even the background is unworn and the head of the Madonna is particularly well preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This painting is to be identified with a tondo seen by Romigioli in the Torrigiani collection in Florence some time before 1835, where it was described as having been acquired by Paolino Santini in Florence in 1793.¹  The same painting was recorded in the diaries of Otto Mündler (1811-1870), by whom it was seen hanging in the Torrigiani collection in Florence on a visit he made there on 23 September 1856. Mündler had been appointed as travelling agent for the National Gallery of London by its first director, Sir Charles Eastlake, and between 1855 and 1857 Mündler acquired fifty-nine paintings for the museum from all over Italy. The tondo was acquired at auction by J. Paul Getty in 1967, bequeathed to the museum that bears his name twenty years later, and de-accessioned in 1992.

Along with Baldassare Peruzzi, to whom this tondo was once attributed (by Mazzarosa), Domenico Beccafumi was one of the most important High Renaissance painters in Siena. He probably travelled to Rome as a young man and although the influence of Michelangelo is visible in his work, he seems to have had greater recourse to Raphael and Fra Bartolommeo, both of whom were reinterpreted by Beccafumi in his own paintings. In the present work the Christ Child's contrapposto and the Madonna's classicising pose are both extremely Raphaelesque, whilst the rather sombre Saint Joseph recalls equivalent figures in Fra Bartolommeo's Holy Families. This painting has been dated by scholars to the end of the 1520s, by comparison with Beccafumi's tondo in the Museo Horne, Florence², or the panel of The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, itself replicated in circular format a number of times, in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.³

This tondo is characteristic of Beccafumi's idiosyncratic style: his colourful palette and sfumato (or 'blurred') painting technique give his works a uniquely recognisable quality. The tondo format became popular in Italy during the 15th century, in particular in Renaissance Florence, but by the second quarter of the 16th century it had become less fashionable. It was a format that Beccafumi particularly favoured and, given that many of his devotional panels were for domestic use, it is likely that he painted tondi upon the request of his patrons. Folchi notes some weakness in the drawing - this is visible, for example, on the peripheral figure of John the Baptist - and this led her to presume that there may have been some workshop intervention in certain areas. The figure of Joseph and the central group of the Madonna and Child are extremely refined, however, and are entirely typical of the artist.

Villa Torrigiani di Camigliano was built in the 16th century by the Buonvisi and was acquired in the middle of the following century by the Marchese Nicola Santini. Ambassador for the Repubblica Lucchese in Paris, Santini rebuilt the villa's façade in the baroque style and amplified the gardens, no doubt influenced by the theatrical settings he had witnessed at Versailles. Vittoria Santini was the last in line and in 1816 married Pietro Guadagni Torrigiani, whose coat-of-arms hangs alongside hers on the villa's façade, together with their bust portraits.

1.  "...in casa Torrigiani, già proprietà Santini, acquistata in Firenze da Paolino Santini nel 1793"; cited by Folchi, see Literature, p. 137.
2.  Inv. 6532; Folchi, op. cit., p. 133, cat. no. P54, reproduced in colour on p. 132.
3.  Folchi, ibid., pp. 134-36, cat. no. P57, reproduced in colour on p. 135.