Domenico Beccafumi, 'Marcia', about 1519

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.