This very celebrated painter and sculptor was the son of a certain Giacomo (Jacopo) di Pace,[207] a labourer on the Podere of Cortine, near the Castle of Montaperto, and was born in 1486. This Podere was the property of the Sienese noble, Lorenzo Beccafumi, who, more than once held high offices in his native town. The boy early showed remarkable artistic promise, and used to amuse himself modelling animals, flowers, and leaves in clay. Lorenzo Beccafumi, one day seeing these efforts, and being struck by their promise, took him into his house, as a sort of servitor, but also gave him the opportunity of studying art. Near the house of the Beccafumi family, was then living an artist, named _Mecarino_, of poor ability and circumstances, but possessing a fine collection of drawings by good masters. These the young Domenico studied carefully, and on the death of Mecarino, by that artist’s special wish, assumed his name. In later years, he also added, by permission of his first patron, the name of _Beccafumi_. He was married twice. By his first wife, Andreoccia, of whose family and origin nothing is known, he had a son, Adriano, who died poor and childless in 1588. By his second wife, Caterina, sister of Pietro Cataneo, the Sienese architect and mathematician, he had two daughters: Ersilia (b. 1535), and Polifila (b. 1573), who became afterwards a Gesuate nun, under the name of Suor Cecilia. His work was very much sought after, and is to be found in all directions, in churches and palaces alike, throughout Siena. (Ill. XXV.) At one time, he came very much under the influence of Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (called _Il Sodoma_), in whose company he worked, from 1518 to 1532, at the decoration of the Oratorio di S. Bernardino,[208] but subsequently, became his rival and bitter enemy. One of his earliest works in Siena was, in 1513, the decoration in fresco of the façade of the Palazzo de’ Borghesi in the Piazza di Postierla, opposite the house of Agostino Bardi, soon afterwards adorned in similar materials by Sodoma.[209] In February, 1515, he purchased a house, numbered 408, in the Via dei Maestri (now Via Tito Sarocchi), for which he paid 270 florins, and, in 1545, another house next door for 245 florins.[210] We find him continually in request to value works of art of all kinds: panel-pictures, frescoes, bronze crucifixes, marble tombs, etc., and Guilds were always employing him to paint bier-heads and banners for them. Among the latter, we are told that he was engaged by the Compagnia di S. Sebastiano in Camollia, to complete Sodoma’s celebrated banner of S. Sebastian (now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence).[211] In 1529, and again in 1535, he received commissions to decorate the Sala del Concistoro in the Palazzo Pubblico; and on the occasion of the visit of Charles V. to Siena (23rd of April, 1536), he, in company with Anton Maria di Paolo Lari (nicknamed _Il Tozzo_) and Lorenzo Donati,