The Gods Metals are capture

Domenico di Jacopo di Pace, commonly known as Beccafumi or, more anciently, Mecherino (Monteaperti, 1486 - Siena, 18 May 1551), was an Italian painter and sculptor. One of the most important and recognisable founders of so-called Mannerism, he was also, next to Sodoma (who was also a foreigner), the last highly influential artist of the Sienese school. Beccafumi was also an engraver of considerable stature; critics have repeatedly, inexplicably, denied the direct execution of the prints by the Sienese despite Vasari's explicit assertion, testimony that the friendship between the two artists makes reliable. Among the prints by Beccafumi that have come down to us, the series of ten small woodcuts, which surprisingly anticipate certain nervous solutions adopted by Parmigianino, depict the search for and exploitation of metals with not too clear alchemical allegories (Passavant, VI, p. 151; one is signed "Mecarinus de Senis inventor s[culpsit]"). This series is most probably the first to have been executed by the artist. In fact, it seems to date from around the first half of the third decade of the century, showing affinities in style with works of that time. It was perhaps the direct acquaintance of Ugo da Carpi during his presumed trip to Rome in 1519 that stimulated this beginning of engraving activity. Two more prints can be dated in the third decade of the century, respectively in stylistic relation to the frieze of Moses causing water to flow (1524) on the floor of Siena Cathedral and the altarpiece in the Chigi-Saracini collection (1528); these are: the engraving signed "Micarino Fec(it)" with Two Nudes in a Landscape (Passavant, VI, p. 150), an engraving that was also printed with the inclusion of a wood, creating the first example of a frequent use in Beccafumi's work, and the two-wood chiaroscuro representing the Four Doctors of the Church (Passavant, VI, p. 150). 150), an engraving that was also printed with the inclusion of a woodcut, creating the first example of a frequent use in Beccafumi, and the chiaroscuro with two woodcuts representing the Four Doctors of the Church (Bartsch, XII, IV, no. 35). The resentful Michelangelo-derived musculature, which formed a component of Beccafumi's style from around 1530 onwards, is evident in two engravings that were probably executed in the middle of the fourth decade and show the combined use of copper and wood: the Apostle in a Niche (Bartsch, XII, IV, no. 216) and the Three Manly Figures Stretched in a Landscape (Siena, Pinacoteca, no. 136). This brings us to the most interesting group of chiaroscuro paintings, which probably coincides with the last decade of the artist's activity and comprises only seven depictions of gigantic draped old men, certainly intended for that series of apostles, evangelists or prophets that was the dominant theme of his old age (Bartsch, XII, IV, nos. 13, 14, 15, 18, 22, 23 and XII, X, no. 12). Only one of these chiaroscuros still shows the already noted superimposition of the wood on the copper plate. In it, however, one can see the frame drawn by the burin becoming lighter, until it almost disappears in the parts reserved for light, to leave the field to the vigorous grooves of the wood. It should be mentioned here that the use of printing cards with several woods, introduced by Ugo da Carpi, was expertly developed by Beccafumi and Antonio da Trento. Unlike the latter, however, who reproduced the works of other artists, the Sienese master used this procedure as a highly personal means of expression particularly suited to rendering the latest developments of his own disruptive luministic conception' [cf. Domenico Sanminiatelli, Beccafumi Domenico, in "Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani" - Volume 7 (1970)].