testate di cataletto sant'agostino

Domenico Beccafumi painted these bier heads for the Saint Augustine altarpiece around 1520, decorative panels that served the functional purpose of finishing the altarpiece program with subsidiary sacred images. Beccafumi's characteristically unconventional approach to color and light is fully evident even in these smaller works: his palette of unusual color combinations—hot reds, pale greens, acid yellows—and the flickering, almost supernatural quality of his light effects distinguish his work from the more harmonious High Renaissance approach of his Florentine contemporaries. Working in Siena, Beccafumi developed a distinctly personal proto-Mannerist style that drew on the city's medieval gold-ground tradition, Michelangelo's sculptural monumentality, and his own visionary sensibility.

The panel shows the distinctive Sienese approach with refined color and elegant figure types, characteristic of the artist's contribution to central Italian devotional painting.