Il Sodoma

Il Sodoma (1477 – 14 February 1549) was the name given to the Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. 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; he spent the bulk of his professional life in Siena, with two periods in Rome.

Biography Giovanni Bazzi was born in Vercelli, Piedmont, in 1477. His first master was the "archaic" Martino Spanzotti; he also appears to have been a student of the painter Giovenone. After acquiring the strong colouring and other distinctive stylistic features of the Lombard school and – though he is not known to have travelled to Milan – somehow absorbing the superficial mannerisms of Leonardo, he travelled to Siena before 1503, perhaps at the behest of agents of the Spannocchi family, and began with fresco cycles for Olivetan monks and a series of small Ovidian ceiling panels and a frieze depicting the career of Julius Caesar for Sigismondo Chigi at Palazzo Chigi.

St Benedict repairs a Broken Colander through Prayer (с. 1502), Chiostro Grande, Abbazia territoriale di Monte Oliveto Maggiore Along with Pinturicchio, Sodoma was one of the first to practice in Siena the style of the High Renaissance. His first important works were 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 .

Sodoma was invited to Rome in 1508 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

Before October 1510 he was in Siena, where he painted the exterior of Palazzo Chigi in monochrome chiaroscuro with scenes from the Bible and from Antiquity, the first such work seen in Siena. His painting at this time began to show distinct Florentine influences, especially of Fra Bartolommeo.

Called again to Rome by Chigi, in the Villa Chigi (now the Villa Farnesina), working alongside Baldassarre Peruzzi, Sodoma painted subjects from the life of Alexander the Great: Alexander in the Tent of Darius and the Nuptials of the Conqueror with Roxanne, which some people consider his masterpiece. When Leo X became pope (1513), Sodoma 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. It is due to the contemporary art historian Giorgio Vasari that Bazzi's nickname of Il Sodoma has become conventional. According to Vasari's testimony, Bazzi always surrounded himself with "boys and beardless youths, whom he loved more than was decent", for which reason he acquired the nickname Il Soddoma. Still, according to Vasari, Bazzi took pride in the nickname and composed stanzas and songs about it.

Bazzi 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. while a drawing at Christ Church is supposed to be a portrait of Raphael by Sodoma. Ordination of Saint Alfonso (1530) - Santo Spirito, Siena Crying for dead Christ or Pietà (1533) - Museo Soumaya, Mexico City Saint Jerome in Penitence (c. 1535–1545) - National Gallery, London The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel (c. 1535–1545) - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine (1539–1540) - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome Pietà (1540) - Galleria Borghese, Rome Sacra Conversazione (1542) - Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa Saint Sebastian with Madonna and Angels (1542) - Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa Allegory of Celestial Love, Chigi-Saracini Collection, Siena Leda Galleria Borghese, Roma Santa Maddalena (Private collection) The Marriage of Alexander and Roxanne - Fresco, Villa Farnesina, Rome Procession to Calvary – Museum & Gallery, Inc., South Carolina Pietà (Private collection)

Critical assessments It is said that Sodoma jeered at Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists and that Vasari repaid him by presenting a negative account of Sodoma'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 and fond of music, and he sang poems composed by himself on indecorous subjects.

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