Saint Dominic and the Burning of the Heretical Books

Saint Dominic and the Burning of the Heretical Books at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, dated to around 1520, depicts a famous episode from the legend of Saint Dominic in which the founder of the Dominican Order threw a heretical book onto a fire to test its truth — the book floated upward while the orthodox text fell into the flames, proving the Dominicans' theology. Beccafumi painted this work as his early Mannerist style was fully forming, and the subject gave him scope for the dramatic light and shadow effects that were becoming characteristic of his work. The Boston panel may have been part of a larger narrative cycle honoring the Dominican Order.

The fire at the center of the composition provides a naturalistic light source that Beccafumi exploits with growing confidence, casting varied illumination on the surrounding figures in ways that anticipate his later nocturnal and dramatically lit compositions. The crowd of witnesses shows the differentiated figure types and varied poses that Beccafumi was developing during this period. Color is more subdued than in his earlier panels, with warm fire-light tones replacing the bright local colors of his first decade.