Domenico Beccafumi, 'Tanaquil', about 1519
About the work
Overview
This panel is part of a series 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 and were completed in 1519. Three of the six surviving panels from the series show Roman heroines – Tanaquil, Cornelia and Marcia – and they probably decorated the back of a bench seat.
Tanaquil persuaded her husband Lucumo to emigrate from Tarquinii to Rome, where he was elected king with the title Tarquinius Priscus. After his assassination she secured the political succession for their slave, Servius Tullius. 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.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- Tanaquil
- Artist
- Domenico Beccafumi
- Artist dates
- 1484 - 1551
- Part of the series
- Classical Heroines from a Sienese Bedchamber
- Date made
- about 1519
- Medium and support
- oil, originally on wood, transferred to canvas
- Dimensions
- 92.1 × 53.3 cm
- Inscription summary
- Inscribed
- Acquisition credit
- Acquired by application of the 1956 Finance Act, 1965
- Inventory number
- NG6368
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
- Previous owners
- Frame
- 19th-century English Frame
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
Images
About the series: Classical Heroines from a Sienese Bedchamber
Overview
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.
Works in the series
More works by Domenico Beccafumi
