This panel is part of a series Beccafumi painted for the  bedchamber of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci, a wealthy merchant and landowner who was nephew of Pandolfo Petrucci, ruler of the republic of Siena. Celebrating themes of love, fertility, and wifely and maternal virtue, the decorations for the bedchamber were probably made to coincide with Francesco’s marriage to Caterina di Niccolò Mandoli Piccolomini in 1512.

Six of the panels survive, though they are in different collections. Three show Roman heroines: Cornelia (Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome), Marcia (National Gallery, London) and Tanaquil (National Gallery, London). Two show Roman festivals: Lupercalia and Cerealia (both Museo di Casa Martelli, Florence). Another painting, Venus and Cupid, is in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham. The paintings of the three heroines and Lupercalia each contain a Latin couplet in gilt lettering.

The three Roman heroines are all exemplars of wifely and maternal virtue. They may have been framed together, forming part of the top of the backboard of a bench seat. Marcia, depicted here, is painted on cherry wood, which suggests that the bench seat was an especially high quality and expensive item in the bedchamber.

The heroines stand in ethereal dawn-lit landscapes and are surrounded by antique architectural fragments. Marcia personified the virtues of marital fidelity and wifely obedience as well as fruitful maternity. The principal source for her story is a passage in Lucan’s epic poem Pharsalia. She was first married to Marcus Porcius Cato and then at his own instigation married his friend Hortensius. When Hortensius died Marcia returned to Cato. Here she raises her left hand in greeting and two fingers of her right hand rest on her belly, perhaps signifying the two husbands whose children she bore. Like the Lupercalia inscription, those of the heroines do not directly quote any known source but contain allusions to multiple classical and early Renaissance texts and were probably invented by a learned advisor.

In the other two panels of heroines, Tanaquil stands by a broken obelisk and Cornelia by a broken column. At the feet of each is a stone tablet inscribed with an identifying Latin couplet written in the first person. Though they do not look directly at the viewer, the women appear to speak, with parted lips and expressive gestures. Tanaquil points to herself and to the explanatory couplet, which translates as: 'I am Tanaquil. In my prescience I created two kings, first my husband, then my slave.' Tanaquil promoted her slave Servus Tullius as the next king after her husband's death.

Learned Cornelia is reading a book, expressing her identity as a cultured and refined woman and an example of maternal dedication. Plutarch’s Lives is the principal source for her legend. She was the daughter of Scipio Africanus who, in an act of magnanimity, promised her to his enemy Tiberius Gracchus. She had twelve children but only three survived – a girl and two boys, known as the Gracchi, whom she famously called her ‘jewels’. As the inscription implies, after her husband’s death she dedicated herself to raising and educating her sons to become patricians of the Roman Republic, and stoically endured the loss of both when they were assassinated.

Style: High Renaissance