SODOMA, GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI, called Il Sodoma. Painter, b. Vercelli 1477, d. Siena 15 Feb 1549.
At thirteen he was apprenticed by his father to learn the craft under Martino Spanzotti, with whom he moved in 1496 to Casale; yet by 1503 he was already in Tuscany, and in 1504 completed his first cycle of frescoes in the refectory of the Olivetan monastery of S. Anna in Campagna near Pienza (Siena). Between 1505 and 1508 he painted in the cloister of the monastery of Monteoliveto Maggiore (Siena) the 31 frescoed scenes 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. The frescoes in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, depicting the Story of Alexander and Roxana, date from 1512 and are considered his finest work. By this time he had already become Siena’s most celebrated painter, where he carried on an intense and uninterrupted activity (apart from brief stays in Florence, Volterra, Pisa, Lucca and Piombino): among the most important commissions he received are two frescoes in the oratory of S. Bernardino (1518), the banner for the confraternity of S. Sebastiano (1525, now in the Galleria Pitti), the well-known frescoes of the Ecstasy and the Fainting of St Catherine of Siena and the Execution of Niccolò di Tuldo in the chapel of St Catherine in S. Domenico (1526), the images of SS Ansano and Vittore in the Palazzo Pubblico (1529), the decoration of the chapel of the Spaniards in S. Spirito (1530), the large fresco above Porta S. Viene (or dei Pispini, 1531), the panel with the Resurrection in the Museo nazionale di Napoli (1535), the fresco in the chapel of the Campo (1537–39) and the panels with the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Deposition in the Duomo of Pisa (1540–41). Besides these works, which are securely dated and documented, mention must be made for his early period of a banner with the Crucifixion recently identified at Montalcino (Museo d’arte sacra), perhaps his earliest work, the tondo with the Nativity (no. 512) and the large panel with the Deposition (no. 413) in the Pinacoteca of Siena; around 1514 may be placed the celebrated fresco of Christ at the Column, formerly in the cloister of S. Francesco and 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 SS Mary Magdalen and Leonard, formerly in the Duomo and now in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena (c. 1530), which won the admiration of Annibale Carracci. Sparse in his vast output are works of profane or mythological subject, yet often of very high quality, such as the tondo with the Allegory of Love in the Louvre and Lucretia in the Museum of Hanover.
In 1510 he married Beatrice di Luca Galli of Siena, by whom he had a daughter who wed his favourite pupil, the Sienese painter and architect Bartolomeo Neroni called “il Riccio.” Of eccentric and disorderly temperament, earning him the nickname “Mattaccio,” extravagant and fond of horses, Sodoma was nonetheless patronised and honoured by the powerful, among them Signor S. Maggio, Jacopo d’Appiano prince of Piombino, and Pope Leo X who made him a Knight of Christ; unconfirmed is his supposed appointment as Count Palatine by Charles V. The inconstancy of his character as a man is reflected in his work as an artist, which shows marked fluctuations in quality, chiefly owing to haste and occasional carelessness. His stylistic development is marked at first by adherence to the Piedmontese-Lombard tradition, recently refreshed by contributions from the Umbrian and Florentine schools; but soon, and especially after his sojourn in Rome in 1512, he came under the influence of Raphael, and even more of Leonardo, whose “sfumato” he became one of the most perceptive and skilful interpreters. A gifted and engaging storyteller, his technique rich in infinite resources, he gave the fullest measure of his great gifts when, guided by an ideal of classical sobriety in the rigour of composition and the expression of feeling, he avoided that languid and sugary sentimentality to which he too often succumbed, yet which in the last century won him a very wide popularity. His historical position is of the highest importance because he was the renewer and master of Sienese pictorial taste throughout the 16th century. — See pl. LVII.
Gen. 18, 16 shows Abraham looking down from the heights of Hebron at Sodom, and Gen. 19, 24 describes how “the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” The sight of the smoke rising from the city “whereupon fire was poured out from heaven” (Gen. 19, 28) fits better the southern part. Tradition has always placed S. and G. south of the peninsula of el-Lisân in the Dead Sea. More than the north, this southern area corresponds to the desolation described by the prophets. The name Gebel Usdum, the salt hill on the right bank of the Dead Sea, perpetuates the name of S., while ‘Ajn Gamah, 65 km further south, may recall the site of G. The approach to the southern theory is supported by the discovery of the cemetery and sanctuary of Bâb ed Drâ’ east of el-Lisân. V. LEONTOPOLI.
BAL.: 1. Penrose Harland, Sodom and Gomorrah, in Bihl. archaeologist, 6 (1943), pp. 42-54. Donato Baldi