Domenico Beccafumi
Italian painter, 1486-1551
Nativity
1545/50
Oil on panel
19 1/8 x 12 1/2 inches (48.578 x 31.75 centimeters)
Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1960.
1960.025.000 KB

The Sienese artist Domenico Beccafumi was one of the first painters to experiment with the forms and color that came to characterize the style known as "Mannerism." The strongly contrasting hues and the kneeling Virgin's elongated, sinuous figure place Beccafumi's Nativity firmly within the Mannerist style, which followed the classically-inspired High Renaissance. Beccafumi made a number of small paintings late in his life that exhibited the same loosely painted, almost sketchy, quality as this one.