After completing middle school in 1886, he decided to continue his art studies and moved to Milan where he lived with his brother Oreste, a pharmacist at the Policlinico.

He attended regular courses at the Brera Academy, gaining entry to the School of Nude Drawing in 1889-1890 and then studying painting with Giuseppe Bertini in the following year.

In 1894, he won the Gavazzi competition at the second Triennale with the painting Canova che modella la Maddalena (lost at sea immediately after its purchase).

Thanks to his friendship with Magno Magni a businessman from Como, Beltrame received important commissions both as a painter (Ritratto di Edoardo Galbiati, 1894, Toscolano-Maderno, private collection, and Caccia con il falcone, 1907; for Villa Magni-Rizzoli) and as a graphic designer specializing in brand logos and posters.

In 1941, the Ranzini Gallery dedicated a retrospective exhibit to him;[1] the next year, following the air-raids that also hit his studio, he moved to Bressana Bottarone in the province of Pavia.

Beltrame continued to paint, inspired by the Pavia countryside, and to work as an illustrator for La Domenica del Corriere, until his last plate appearing on 26 November 1944.

"[4] At a time when the objectivity of the camera was gradually supplanting the news drawing, Beltrame, instead of giving a detached account of events (assassinations of crowned heads, shoot-outs between bandits and the forces of order, bloody strikes, earthquakes, shipwrecks, trench warfare, etc.