The Reconciliation of Marcus Emilius Lepidus and Fulvius Flaccus

On 5 April 1529 Beccafumi was commissioned to paint the ceiling of a large room on the first floor of the Palazzo Pubblico. Now known as the Sala del Concistoro, it appears that it became the meeting place of this magistracy only after the remodelling of the Palazzo Pubblico in the seventeenth century. Designated as the sala dipinta (the ‘painted room’) on an early seventeenth- century plan of the building, it is likely that it was originally designed as a room for the reception of foreign embassies and similar ceremonial events. Despite being required to complete the work within eighteen months and receiving payments for it in May and August 1530 and October 1532, Beccafumi left this elaborate scheme of painting unfinished in order to go to work for another patron, Andrea Doria, in Genoa. He then resumed the project in 1534, receiving final payment for it on 21 April 1535. Thus, a project that was meant to have taken only eighteen months in fact took six years to complete.

Beccafumi’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sala del Concistoro are complex in their subject matter and imagery. The ceiling is comprised of a large rectangular centrepiece surrounded on all four sides by a deep cove. The subjects of the paintings on the cove of the ceiling are all drawn directly from the Roman author Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Deeds and Sayings.

The painting of the Reconciliation of Marcus Emilius Lepidus and Fulvius Flaccus dominates the west side of the ceiling. Representing the peace made between a powerful consul and his principal enemy, the subject was chosen to illustrate a notable act of benevolence and good will in ancient Roman history. Set in an orderly and impressive rendition of the Campo Marzio in Rome, with temples and other ancient civic buildings in the background, the two protagonists are represented embracing one another in a dignified manner. Other figures witness this scene including two animated youths to the left of the kneeling consuls. A bearded man on the extreme right looks directly out towards the spectator and may be a portrait of the painter himself. If this is the case, it appears that this particular painting was of some significance for the scheme as a whole. It is the first painting to draw one’s attention as one enters the room since it lies directly opposite the entrance door. In colour, perspective and luminosity, it also functions as an eye- catching painting within the generally rich embellishment of the ceiling as whole.

In many ways, the ceiling of the Sala del Concistoro represents the culmination of sixteenth-century Sienese civic art. Although completed by 1535 and therefore twenty years before the fall of the Sienese republic, it provides another compelling demonstration of the traditional yet also innovatory characteristics of Sienese painting at that time.