SODOMA, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called Il. - Painter, b. at Vercelli in 1477, d. at Siena on 15 February 1549.
At the age of thirteen he was placed by his father to learn the art under Martino Spanzotti, with whom he moved to Casale in 1496: but by 1503 he had already moved to Tuscany, where in 1504 he completed his first cycle of frescoes in the refectory of the Olivetan monastery of S. Anna in Campenna near Pienza (Siena). Between 1505 and 1508 he executed in the cloister of the monastery of Monteoliveto Maggiore (Siena) 31 frescoed stories of the life of St. Benedict, continuing a cycle begun by Luca Signorelli (1497-1501), and in the same year he signed a contract for the decoration of the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. From 1512 are the frescoes in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, with the Story of Alexander and Roxana, his finest work. By that time, however, he had already become the most famous painter in Siena, where he carried on an extremely intense and uninterrupted activity (except for brief stays in Florence, Volterra, Pisa, Lucca and Piombino): among the most important commissions entrusted to him are two frescoes in the oratory of S. Bernardino (1518), the banner for the confraternity of S. Sebastiano (1525, now preserved in the Pitti Gallery), the very well-known frescoes with the Ecstasy and the Fainting of St. Catherine of Siena and the Execution of Nicolò di Tuldò in the chapel of St. Catherine in S. Domenico (1526), the images of Sts. Ansano and Vittore in the Palazzo pubblico (1529), the decoration of the chapel of the Spaniards in S. Spirito (1530), the great fresco above the Porta S. Viene (or dei Pispini, 1531), the panel with the Resurrection in the National Museum of Naples (1535), the fresco in the chapel of the Campo (1537-39) and the panels with the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Deposition in the Cathedral of Pisa (1540-41). Besides these works, securely dated and documented, there should be remembered for the youthful period a banner with the Crucifixion recently identified at Montalcino (Museo d'arte sacra), which is perhaps his earliest work, the tondo with the Nativity (no. 512) and the large panel with the Deposition (no. 413) of the Pinacoteca of Siena; around 1514 must be placed the much-celebrated fresco with Christ at the Column, formerly in the cloister of S. Francesco, now in the Pinacoteca of Siena (no. 352), while to a later period belong two other masterpieces: the large panel with the Epiphany in the church of S. Agostino in Siena and the panel with the Holy Family and St. Leonard, formerly in the Cathedral and now in the Palazzo pubblico of Siena (ca. 1530), which aroused the admiration of Annibale Carracci. Scarce, in the otherwise vast output of the S., are works of profane and mythological subject, but often of very high quality, such as the tondo with the Allegory of Love in the Louvre and the Lucretia in the Museum of Hannover. In 1510 the S. married Beatrice di Luca Galli of Siena, by whom he had a daughter whom he gave in marriage to his favorite pupil, the Sienese painter and architect Bartolommeo Neroni called "il Riccio." A bizarre and disorderly temperament, such as to earn him the nickname of "Mattaccio," prodigal and fond of horses, the S. was nevertheless protected and honored by the powerful, among them Sigismondo Chigi, Jacopo d'Appiano prince of Piombino and the pontiff Leo X who made him a Knight of Christ: his appointment as Count Palatine by Charles V is instead unverified. The inconstancy of his character as a man is reflected in his production as an artist, which displays very marked qualitative unevenness, due above all to the haste and the scant care with which he sometimes worked. His stylistic path is characterized initially by an adherence to the Piedmontese-Lombard tradition, recently reinvigorated with contributions from the Umbrian and Florentine school: but very soon, and above all after his stay in Rome in 1512, the S. felt the ascendancy of Raphael, and even more of Leonardo, of whose "sfumato" he was one of the most intelligent and skillful interpreters. A fanciful and pleasing narrator, and of a most supple technique rich in infinite resources, the S. gave the highest measure of his great possibilities when, conforming to an ideal of classical sobriety in the rigor of composition and in the expression of the affections, he knew how to avoid that languid and cloying sentimentality to which he too often indulged, and which nevertheless won him, especially in the last century, a very wide popularity. His historical position is of the greatest importance because he was the renewer and the master of Sienese pictorial taste throughout the whole 16th century. - See pl. LVII.
Bibliography11 works
Enzo Carli