Il Sodoma

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 style that superimposed the high renaissance style of early 16th century Rome with the provincial Siennese style.

He is said to have borne also the name of Sodona as a family name, and likewise the name Tizzioni. Sodona is signed on some of his pictures. While Bazzi was corrupted into Razzi, Sodona may have been corrupted into Sodoma. Giorgio Vasari, however, accounted for the name differently — as a nickname from his personal character. This version appears to have been inspired by Bazzi's pupil and subsequent rival Beccafumi. In his work on the painter, RH Cust's makes another suggestion. Vasari tells a story that when Bazzi's horse won a race at Florence, a cry of "Who is the owner?" went up, and Bazzi contemptuously answered, "Sodoma," in order to insult the Florentines (according to Milanesi). Cust offers the suggestion of the Italian friend, that the racing name was really a clipped form of Sodoma, "I am the trainer". Whatever the origin, the name was long supposed to indicate an immoral 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; and he appears to have been in his native place a scholar of the painter Giovenone. After acquiring the strong coloring and other distinctive marks of the Lombard school, he went to Siena towards the close of the 15th century by the behest of agents of the Spannocchi family; and, as the bulk of his professional life passed in the Tuscan city. He is considered a painter of the Sienese school, although not strictly affined to it in points of style.

Along with Pinturicchio, he was one of the first to establish there the matured style of the Cinquecento. His earliest works of repute are 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 which Luca Signorelli began in 1498. Bazzi completed the set in 1502, and included a self portrait with badgers.[link]

He was invited to Rome by the celebrated Sienese merchant Agostino Chigi, and was employed there by Pope Julius II in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican. He executed two great compositions and various ornaments and grotesques. The latter 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 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, are more particularly noticed. 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 in recompense and created him a cavaliere.

Bazzi afterwards returned to Siena and at a later date went in quest of work to 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 squandered his property and is said, rather dubiously, to have died in penury in the great hospital of Siena.

In his youth Bazzi had married a lady of good position, but they disagreed and separated soon afterwards. A daughter of theirs married Bartolommeo Neroni, named also Riccio Sanese or Maestro Riccio, one of Bazzi's principal pupils.

It is said that Bazzi jeered at the History of the Painters written by Vasari, and that Vasari consequently traduced him. He gives a bad account of Bazzi's morals and demeanour, and is niggardly towards the merits of his art. According to Vasari, the ordinary name by which Bazzi was known was "Il Mattaccio" (the Madcap, the Maniac) — this epithet being first 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 which he kept there. He was a cracker of jokes and fond of music, and sang poems composed by himself on indecorous subjects.

In his art Vasari alleges that Bazzi was always negligent — his early success in Siena, where he painted many portraits, being partly due to want of competition. As he advanced in age he became too lazy to make cartoons for his frescoes, but daubed them straight off upon the wall. Vasari admits, nevertheless, that Bazzi produced at intervals some works of very fine quality, and during his lifetime his reputation stood 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 speaks of his having only ripened into an artist during the two years (1498-1500) he spent at Milan with Leonardo. Some critics see in Bazzi's Madonna in the Brera (if it is really 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, and 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 San Domenico (Siena), showing the namesake 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. By many critics one or other of these paintings is regarded as Bazzi's masterpiece. In the choir of the cathedral at Pisa is the Sacrifice of Abraham, and in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence as St Sebastian.

Partial anthology of works

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

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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)[link]
Rape of Sabine Women (1525,Galleria d'Arte Antica, Rome)[link]
Di Drei Parzen (1525,Galleria d'Arte Antica, Rome)[link]
Saint George and Dragon (1518, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)[link]
Frescos for Marriage of Alexander and Roxanne for Palazzo Chigi (Siena)
The Death of Lucretia (1513, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest)[link]
The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine (1539-40, Galleria d'Arte Antica, Rome)[link]
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)

References

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, by Robert H Hobart Cust (1906), which contains a full bibliography.

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