Domenico Beccafumi

Walk into Siena Cathedral and the floor itself is a picture gallery. Domenico Beccafumi spent much of his life on it, designing large scenes inlaid in coloured marble, among them a dramatic 'Sacrifice of Abraham' and rows of sibyls set into the pavement.

He was Siena's great late-Renaissance painter, working in the strange, acidic colours the city liked, pinks and sulphurous yellows, with flickering light that already leans toward Mannerism. He also cast bronze and made woodcuts.

The marble floor took generations of artists to complete, and Beccafumi's panels, worked in the 1520s and later, are among the most admired stretches of it. Much of what visitors walk over is roped off and uncovered only for a few weeks each year.