Il Sodoma

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St. Sebastian (1525) Oil on canvas, 206 x 154 cm Galleria Palatina, Florence

Il Sodoma (1477 - February 14, 1549?) was the name given to the Italian Mannerist painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (also wrongly spelled Razzi). Il Sodoma painted in a manner that superimposed the High Renaissance style of early 16th-century Rome onto the traditions of the provincial Sienese school.

The artist's real surname is uncertain. He is said to have borne the family name of "Sodona" but also the name "Tizzioni". Sodona is the signature on some of his pictures. While Bazzi was corrupted into Razzi, Sodona may have been corrupted into "Sodoma". Whatever the origin, the name was long believed to indicate that the artist possessed an immoral, homosexual character.

Bazzi was of the family de Bazis, and born at Vercelli in Lombardy in 1477. His first master was Martino Spansotto, by whom one signed picture is known; he also appears to have been a student of the painter Giovenone. After acquiring the strong coloring and other distinctive stylistic features of the Lombard school, he traveled to Siena towards the close of the 15th century, at the behest of agents of the Spannocchi family. He spent the bulk of his professional life in the Tuscan city and is considered a painter of the Sienese school, although not strictly affiliated with it in terms of style.

Along with Pinturicchio, Bazzi was one of the first to practice in Siena the style of the early Italian Cinquecento. His first important works were 17 frescoes in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore (on the road from Siena to Rome) illustrating the life of St Benedict in continuation of the series that Luca Signorelli had begun in 1498. Bazzi completed the set in 1502 and included a self portrait with badgers.[1]

Bazzi was invited to Rome by the celebrated Sienese merchant Agostino Chigi and was employed there by Pope Julius II in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. He executed two great compositions and various ornaments and grotesques. The decorative elements are still extant, but the larger works did not satisfy the pope, who engaged Raphael to substitute his Justice, Poetry, and Theology. In the Chigi Palace (now the Farnesina) Bazzi painted subjects from the life of Alexander the Great: Alexander in the Tent of Darius and the Nuptials of the Conqueror with Roxana, which some people consider his masterpiece. When Leo X became pope (1513), Bazzi presented him with a picture of the Death of Lucretia (or of Cleopatra, according to some accounts). Leo gave him a large sum of money as a reward and created him a cavaliere.

Bazzi afterwards returned to Siena and, at a later date, sought work in Pisa, Volterra, and Lucca. From Lucca he returned to Siena not long before his death on 14 February 1549 (older narratives say 1554). He had supposedly squandered his property and is said, without documentary support, to have died in penury in the great hospital of Siena.

In his youth, Bazzi had married, but he and his wife soon separated. A daughter married Bartolommeo Neroni, called also Riccio Sanese or Maestro Riccio, one of Bazzi's principal pupils.

It is said that Bazzi jeered at Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists and that Vasari repaid him by presenting a negative account of Bazzi's morals and demeanour and withholding praise of his work. According to Vasari, the name by which Bazzi was known was "Il Mattaccio" (the Madcap, the Maniac), this epithet having been bestowed upon him by the monks of Monte Oliveto. He dressed gaudily, like a mountebank, and his house was a Noah's ark, owing to the strange miscellany of animals he kept there. He was a cracker of jokes, fond of music, and he sang poems composed by himself on indecorous subjects.

Vasari alleges that Bazzi was always a negligent artist, his early success in Siena, where he painted many portraits, being partly due to lack of competition. As he aged, he became too lazy to make cartoons for his frescoes but daubed them straight onto the wall. Vasari nevertheless admits that Bazzi produced some works of very fine quality and that during his lifetime his reputation was high.

Some of his works, including the Holy Family now in the Pinacoteca, have been mistaken for works of Da Vinci. His easel pictures are rare; there are two in the National Gallery, London.

It is uncertain whether Bazzi was a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, though Morelli, in his Italian Pictures in German Galleries claimed that he ripened into an artist only during the two years (1498-1500) that he spent with Leonardo in Milan. Some critics see in Bazzi's Madonna in the Brera (if it really is by Bazzi) the direct influence of this master. Modern criticism follows Morelli in supposing that Raphael painted Bazzi's portrait in The School of Athens, while a drawing at Christ Church is supposed to be a portrait of Raphael by Bazzi.

Among his masterpieces are the frescoes, completed in 1526, in the chapel of St. Catherine of Siena painted for the church of San Domenico (Siena), depicting the saint in ecstasy, fainting as she receives the Eucharist from an angel. In the oratory of S. Bernardino, are scenes from the history of the Virgin, painted in conjunction with Pacchia and Beccafumi (1536-1538) — the Visitation and the Assumption. In S. Francesco, are the Deposition from the Cross (1513) and Christ Scourged. Many critics regard one or the other of these paintings as Bazzi's masterpiece. In the choir of the cathedral at Pisa is the Sacrifi.

[edit] Partial anthology of works

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Sodoma

Sacra Conversacione (1542, Museo di San Matteo, Pisa)
Lucrezia (Turin)
Ordination of Saint Alfonso (1530, Santo Spirito, Siena)
Saint Sebastian with Madonna and Angels,(1542, Museo di San Matteo, Pisa)[2]
Rape of Sabine Women (1525,Galleria d'Arte Antica, Rome)[3]
Di Drei Parzen (1525,Galleria d'Arte Antica, Rome)[4]
Saint George and Dragon (1518, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)[5]
Frescos for Marriage of Alexander and Roxanne for Palazzo Chigi (Siena)
The Death of Lucretia (1513, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest)[6]
The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine (1539-40, Galleria d'Arte Antica, Rome)[7]
Allegory of Celestial Love (Chigi Saracini Collection, Siena)
Pietà (1540, Galleria Borghese, Rome)
The Road to Calvary (1510, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest)
Flagellation of Christ (1510, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest)
Sacra Conversacione (1542, Museo di San Matteo, Pisa)