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Title: Sodoma
Author: Contessa Priuli-Bon
Release date: February 25, 2026 [eBook #78038]
Language: English
Original publication: London: George Bell & Sons, 1900
Credits: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SODOMA ***
The Great Masters
in Painting and Sculpture
Edited by G. C. Williamson
[Illustration:
_Swan Electric Engraving Co._
_Brogi photo._ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence._
St. Sebastian.]
SODOMA
BY THE
CONTESSA PRIULI-BON
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1900
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
BIBLIOGRAPHY xi
Chapter I. HIS ORIGIN AND EARLY LIFE 1
II. MONTE OLIVETO 16
III. ROME 26
IV. SUCCESS AT SIENA 40
V. UNKNOWN PERIOD AND RETURN TO SIENA 53
VI. LATER YEARS 70
VII. GENERAL CHARACTER 90
CATALOGUE OF THE WORKS OF SODOMA 103
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 103
BRITISH ISLES 104
FRANCE 106
GERMANY 107
ITALY 108
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS 133
DOCUMENTS 138
INDEX 141
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
St. Sebastian, _Frontispiece_ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
The Deposition from the Cross _Accademia, Siena_ 12
The Nativity _Accademia, Siena_ 14
Three Scenes from the Life of St. Benedict
_Monte Oliveto, Siena_ 16, 18, 20
Ceiling in the Camera della Segnatura _Vatican_ 26
The Madonna and Child _Brera, Milan_ 28
The Madonna and Child, with Saints _Turin_ 30
Alexander and Roxana _Villa Farnesina, Rome_ 32
Study for Roxana _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_ 32
The Family of Darius _Villa Farnesina, Rome_ 34
The Last Supper _Monte Oliveto, near Florence_ 40
Christ bound to the Column _Accademia, Siena_ 44
Head of an Apostle _Accademia, Siena_ 46
The Salutation of the Virgin _San Bernardino, Siena_ 48
The Presentation of the Virgin _San Bernardino, Siena_ 48
The Assumption of the Virgin _San Bernardino, Siena_ 50
The Coronation of the Virgin _San Bernardino, Siena_ 50
The Adoration of the Magi _San Agostino, Siena_ 50
St. Louis of Toulouse _San Bernardino, Siena_ 54
San Bernardino. By Pacchiarotto
_San Bernardino, Siena_ 56
Head of St. Sebastian _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_ 58
The Madonna in Glory, with Saints
_Uffizi Gallery, Florence_ 60
Christ in Limbo _Accademia, Siena_ 60
Study for Pietà in the Casa
Bambagini, Siena _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_ 62
The Vision of St. Catherine _San Domenico, Siena_ 64
The Communion of St. Catherine _San Domenico, Siena_ 66
The Prayer of St. Catherine _San Domenico, Siena_ 68
Saint Victor _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_ 70
Saint Ansano _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_ 72
The Resurrection _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_ 76
The Madonna and Child, with St.
Leonard and St. Joseph _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_ 80
The Madonna and Child, with St.
John _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_ 82
The Holy Family _Villa Borghese, Rome_ 82
The Sacrifice of Isaac _Cathedral, Pisa_ 86
The Madonna and Child, with Saints _Museo Civico, Pisa_ 88
Head of Sodoma _Monte Oliveto, Siena_ 90
Portrait of Sodoma _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_ 90
Chalk drawing of a Head _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_ 94
_N.B._--Since this work has been written some important
evidence has been discovered in Siena, proving that
Pacchiarotto painted the figure of San Bernardino, hitherto
ascribed to Sodoma, which is illustrated at page 56.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARETINO, PIETRO. “Lettere.” Paris, 1609.
ARMENINI. “Veri precetti della pittura.”
BAEDEKER. “Guide to Northern Italy.” “Guide to Central Italy.”
BALDINUCCI. “I Decennali.” “Notizie intorno di professori di
disegno.”
BODE. “Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft,” xii. Heft, i.
BOTTARI. “Lettere pittoriche.”
BOURGET. “Voyage en Italie.”
BRUZZA, DON LUIGI. “Notizie intorno alia patria e di primi
studi del pittore Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, detto il Sodoma.”
_Miscellanea di storia Italiana._ (Vol. i. Torino, Stamperia
reale, 1862.)
Burlington Fine Art Club Catalogue, Lombard Exhibition, 1898.
CROWE AND CAVALCASELLE. “History of Painting in Italy.” London,
1866.
DELLA VALLE. “Lettere Senesi.”
FRIZZONI, GUSTAVO. “Arte Italiana del Rinascimento,” Milano,
1891. “Collezione di quaranta disegni scelti dalla raccolta del
Senatore Giovanni Morelli, riprodotti in eliotipia.” Hoepli,
Milano, 1886. “Intorno alla dimora del Sodoma a Roma nel 1514,”
“Giornale d’ Erudizione artistica,” Perugia, 1872, Vol. i.
JAMESON, MRS. “Legends of the Monastic Orders.”
JANSEN, ALBERT. “Leben und Werke des Malers Giovannantonio
Bazzi von Vercelli, genannt il Sodoma; als Beitrag zur
Geschichte der italienischen Renaissance zum ersten Male
beschrieben.” Stuttgart, 1870.
KUGLER. “Handbook of Painting.” Edited by Sir Henry Austen
Layard. Murray. London, 1891.
LANDI. Descrizione del Duomo di Siena, MS.
LANZI. “History of Painting.” Translated by T. Roscoe. Bohn.
London, 1847.
LÜBKE. “Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte.” Stuttgart, 1868.
MILANESI. “Nuovi documenti intorno alla storia dell’ arte
Senese.” “Commentario alla Vita del Sodoma nelle annotazioni
e commenti alla Vite dei pittore da Giorgio Vasari.” Sansoni.
Firenze, 1881.
MORELLI. “Italian Painters. The Borghese and Doria Pamphili
Galleries.” Translated by Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes. Murray.
London, 1892. “Italian Painters. The Munich and Dresden
Galleries.” Translated by C. J. Ffoulkes. Murray. London, 1893.
MURRAY. “Guide to North Italy.”
MÜNDLER. “Beiträge zur Jacob Burckhardt’s Cicerone.”
PERINI. “Lettere sul arcicenobio di Monte Oliveto.”
RICHTER, J. P. “Leonardo da Vinci.” Sampson Low, London, 1894.
“Notes on Bohn’s edition of Vasari.” London, 1897.
RIO. “Léonard Da Vinci et son école.”
SCHURÈ, E. “La Drame Musicale.”
SYMONDS. “The Renaissance in Italy.” Smith, Elder & Co.,
London, 1897.
TIRABOSCHI. “Storia della Lettaratura Italiana.” Modena, 1792.
THOMAS, DON GRÉGOIRE. “L’Abbaye de Mont Olivet Majeur.” Le
Monnier, Firenze, 1881.
UGURGIERI-AZZOLINI, ISIDORO. “Le Pompe Sanesi.” Siena, 1649.
VASARI, GIORGIO. “Le vite dei Pittori.” Sansoni, Firenze, 1880.
CHAPTER I
HIS ORIGIN AND EARLY LIFE
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, or Sodoma, as he is more commonly called,
is one of the most interesting of that large group of lesser-known
artists, who helped to make the Renaissance the widespread and
penetrating movement which it became.
To the lights of the first magnitude belong the honours of the pioneer;
great Raphael, greater Angelo, and mysterious Leonardo, forming,
each along strongly individual and vital lines, the basis of a great
artistic tradition.
Following hard upon these men comes a group of whom Andrea del Sarto
and Giovanni Antonio Bazzi are perhaps most fully representative;
artists to whom originality of a pronounced kind was not lacking, but
in whom a certain over-sensibility, a division of the soul between
faithful adherence to the art-ideal and the spell of the world, lay at
the root of their partial success.
Yet it is certainly around these men, whose _whole_ life was neither
great nor successful, and whose work was, for the most part, but the
patient toil of the skilled craftsman, but who, none the less, at
some rare crises in their lives stepped forth from the ranks of the
commonplace and wrought work worthy of the greatest, that the human
interest centres.
The peculiar attraction belonging to Sodoma lies, not so much in what
he actually achieved as in what he might have done--the promise in
him of great power only occasionally fulfilled. His masterworks, the
“Christ bound to the Column” of the Siena Gallery, “The Vision of St.
Catherine” in the church of San Domenico, and the marvellous “Martyrdom
of St. Sebastian” which hangs in the Uffizi, claim for him a place
among the masters of his time, yet the vast bulk of his frescoes,
hastily drawn, lacking in composition, and often heavily coloured, can
only be accounted as of second-rate merit.
In view of these defects it was perhaps excusable that the public of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ignored him; but it overlooked
his great gifts as a psychologist and his immense insight at certain
moments, into the deeper springs of human emotion. One cannot say that
this insight was perpetual, or that it was always given to him to be
the interpreter of the intenser motives which actuate mankind. The
outer life of the man was not of a nature to foster such intuition, and
little by little it left him, as with age his hand waxed feebler and
his capacity for noble enthusiasm cooled.
For information as regards his biography we owe a good deal to quite
modern research. Vasari, never very accurate in his statements
concerning artists of other than the Tuscan School, disliked Sodoma
personally, and in the first edition of his famous “Lives” omitted him
altogether. After the painter’s death he inserted a short sketch of
his career, in which he not only vilified his personal character, but
in many cases spoke disparagingly of his value as a painter.
Sodoma was, however, held in high esteem by other artists. Raphael, as
we know, not only refused to destroy his ceiling decorations in the
Camera della Segnatura, but introduced his portrait into the “School of
Athens” side by side with his own.
Annibale Carracci, when he passed through Siena, was greatly struck
with the quality of Sodoma’s work, and is said to have remarked, “Bazzi
appears a very eminent master of the greatest caste, and few such
pictures are to be seen.”[1]
Leo X. gave him the title of _Cavalliere di Cristo_, and the Emperor
Charles V. created him Count Palatine. He had Agostino Chigi and
the Prince of Piombino for his patrons, and the _Signoria_ of Siena
employed him on the most important public works. Beccafumi left the
Roman schools and went to Siena in order to study under Sodoma, and his
drawings were prized by artists of greater repute.
Of his early life and the artistic influences which moulded him,
Vasari, who was his contemporary, tells us nothing, Lomazzo ignores him
altogether, and Padre Della Valle, who commentated the Siena edition of
Vasari, had but scant materials upon which to work.
It was not until within recent years that Italian scholars began
consulting the Archives, and a certain Barnabite father, Don Luigi
Bruzza, made some valuable discoveries concerning all that pertains to
Sodoma’s early life at Vercelli.
He is thus found to have been the son of one Giacomo di Antonio dei
Bazzi, a shoemaker of Briandate, who established himself at Vercelli,
in Piedmont, somewhere about 1475, as shown on an act of that date.[2]
In 1476 the shoemaker married a certain Angelina of Pergamo (Bergamo),
and it is believed that their eldest son, Giovanni Antonio, was born
in the following year. Vasari says that he died in 1554, at the age
of seventy-five, in which case he would have been born in 1479, but
in both the date of his death and his age at the time, Vasari is now
believed to be incorrect. Baldinucci thought that he might have been
born about 1479, because, in his portrait at Monte Oliveto, painted
during 1504, he appears to be about twenty-five years of age.[3] Among
modern historians, Milanesi, not finding any definite entry concerning
his birth, hazarded the theory that it might have taken place in
1474.[4]
Bruzza, however, argues the point as follows:[5] in the father’s will,
dated August 13th, 1497, Giovanni Antonio is mentioned before his
brother Niccola or his sister Amadea, which would point to his being
the eldest. He must have still been under age in 1502 (twenty-five
was the age in Piedmont at which a man attained his majority) for in
another document Angelina, the mother, is named as guardian of all
the three children, while in an act of August 2nd, 1503, the younger
brother Niccola, was the only one mentioned as being still under
tutelage. Giovanni Antonio, therefore, probably reached his majority
between January 1502 and August 1503.
Thus Don Luigi Bruzza establishes the date of his birth. As to his
birthplace there need have been no confusion, for, though Vasari only
speaks of Vercelli, without giving the province, he refers to that
“warm and vivid colouring which he had brought with him from Lombardy.”
The sixteenth-century writers, Tizio, Giovio, and Armenini, all refer
to him as a Piedmontese, and it was not until 1649 that any doubt was
thrown upon the whereabouts of Vercelli, and then a Siennese priest and
_littérateur_, Isidoro Ugurgieri-Azzolini, who was compiling a curious
little book called _Le Pompe Sanesi_, a series of short biographies
of all the notable men of his town, was filled with a burning desire
to rank the distinguished painter among the children of Siena, and
solemnly spoke of him as “certainly born at Vergelle, a little castle
in the province of Siena, sixteen miles from the city.”[6]
Della Valle, however, in his famous _Lettere Senesi_ printed in
1786, rather sneers at Ugurgieri’s narrow patriotism, and quotes the
manuscript of an earlier writer, Lanzi by name, who described the
painter as “Giovanni Antonio, called Sodoma, by birth of Vercelli in
Piedmont, and by education, establishment, and dwelling, Siennese.”[7]
In that same entry, which led Ugurgieri’s into a mistaken theory
concerning his birth, was a misspelling or a careless writing of the
family name, and the worthy father, instead of _Bazzi_, read _Razzi_,
an error which was copied by Lanzi and other writers, and is still
perpetuated by the directors of some of the galleries at the present
day.
Milanesi, however, discovered three entries in the Siena Archives which
agree in their spelling of the name with the Vercelli documents alluded
to above. A fourth entry, however, carries some confusion with it, for
there we read, “Misser Giovannantonio dei Tizioni, detto il Sodoma,
pittore da Verzé.”
Milanesi argued from this that the father might possibly have
belonged to the house of the Tizioni, nobles of Vercelli, and that
he had changed his name when forced by poverty to adopt the trade
of a shoemaker. Later on he abandoned that theory for Bruzza’s
conclusion that it was out of mere vanity that Sodoma had added the
name to his own. But to the Act of 1490 in which Giovanni Antonio was
apprenticed to Spanzotti, Francesco, son of Agostino Tizio, was witness
and referee, and we are of opinion that the Tizioni may have been
patrons of the family, and that, following a frequent Italian custom,
he sometimes used the surname of the noble house to which he was
indebted. Bruzza found among the Acts of a certain notary of Vercelli
an agreement[8] between the elder Bazzi, Giacomo, and a certain
glass-painter, Martino Spanzotti, by which the former placed his son to
an apprenticeship of seven years, and agreed to pay for his instruction
during that time in all the branches of painting, on glass as well as
wood, the sum of fifty Milanese florins.
Spanzotti’s works are rare, and his style stiff, highly finished, and
elaborated with gold, for Sodoma’s first pictures after his arrival in
Siena had traces of this older and gaunter manner. Padre della Valle
finds in them a resemblance to the work of Giovanone, who flourished at
Vercelli between 1513 and 1527, but we cannot be sure that the student
fell under his influence.
The agreement with Spanzotti was dated November 20th, 1490, and as it
held good for seven years we may infer that it was towards the end of
1497 that young Sodoma left his early home and the old glass-painter
who had taught him how to draw, and started out into the world. But
from 1497 to 1501 we have no real information concerning him, and first
become acquainted with his work when already arrived at maturity and
passing with rapid strides towards the full developments of his early
middle period. Morelli conjectured that he went straight to Milan from
Vercelli and studied there under the direct influence of Leonardo.
Whether this was the case we have so far no means of ascertaining.
Artistically, Sodoma certainly ranks among the Lombards, the whole
tendency of his painting is more and more towards the Leonardesque.
Admitting the theory of his having worked under the great Florentine,
or at any rate of his having moved in the same circle at Milan, it
would seem as if the influence of Leonardo had had but little effect
upon him at the moment, but had borne its fruit by slow degrees. It was
as if he had deliberately striven, in later years, to approach more and
more to the manner which had deeply impressed him in early youth.
His first panels in Siena, the “Deposition” and the various _tondi_,
are far more Tuscan in their composition and drawing than Lombardesque;
in the Monte Oliveto frescoes the Lombard manner is more pronounced,
and by the time he gets to Rome and decorates the Camera della
Segnatura his artistic individuality is fully declared.
In any case Sodoma could not have been very many years in the Lombard
capital, for in 1501 we find him working at Siena.[9] Vasari says that
he was induced to go there by an agent of the Spanocchi, rich Siennese
bankers and merchants, sons of that Ambrogio Spanocchi who built the
family palace at Siena and was the trusted treasurer of Pius II.
Sodoma probably needed but little persuasion to accompany him; he was
fond of change and travel, moreover the downfall and exile of Ludovico
Sforza, and the placing of the city under French rule, had unsettled
the whole of society, and men were less ready to spend their wealth
on the decoration of palaces, or the painting of portraits, than on
means of public and private defence. Leonardo, also, had left Milan and
betaken himself to Venice on the downfall of the Sforza.
Siena offered the young painter exactly the field that he desired.
It was at that moment without any native painters of merit, for the
earlier school, founded on the principles of Giotto, had lost its
vitality with the death of Bartolo di Fredi, fifty years before. It
had been a school of intense refinement, the contemplative, tranquil
thought, of the later Middle Ages, when, the excitement of the
Crusades at an end and the struggle of the Communes for independence
virtually accomplished, Europe had settled down into a condition of
contemplative industrial development. Florence and Milan had stepped
beyond this stage. The delicacy of Fra Angelico had given place to
the more vigorous, more dramatic, infinitely robuster arts of the
Renaissance, and Michelangelo was already carrying vigour and passion
to an extreme, until violent action and melodramatic sentiment came to
be the rule in painting. But the artists of Siena had gone on in the
old groove, and such school as lingered through the fifteenth century
was without life or originality. One of the recent Popes had been a
Siennese, Æneas-Silvius Piccolomini, humanist, man of letters, art
patron, and priest, a man of contradictions, like many of his age, not
quite certain whether to be wholly humanist or wholly ecclesiastic.
It was to his memory that his nephew, Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini
(afterwards Pope Pius III.) built the magnificent library attached
to the cathedral and invited Pinturicchio in 1502 to paint the great
decorative series of frescoes which were to illustrate the Pontiff’s
life.
Pinturicchio was, however, middle-aged, and he worked in the earlier
Umbrian manner which he had acquired from Perugino, nor had he the
versatility to adapt himself to more modern requirements.
Sodoma, belonging to a younger generation, trained in a freer school,
and more naturally ready to absorb the tendencies of the time, was the
very man needed to give new life to the art-world of the place.
He seems to have painted a number of portraits during those early
years at Siena; he was exceedingly popular; he made a great deal of
money, and he spent it lavishly, often on childish freaks.
Vasari was the authority for his extravagances, and it is probable
that, disliking Sodoma personally as he did, he exaggerated the
small eccentricities and unconventionalities of a wayward artistic
disposition, keen in its love of sport and with the same passionate
fondness for dumb animals as his great master, Leonardo.
“He amused himself,” says Vasari, “by keeping in his house all kinds
of strange animals, badgers, squirrels, apes, cat-a-mountains, dwarf
asses, and barbs to run races, Elban ponies, magpies, dwarf chickens,
Indian doves, and other beasts of similar kind, in fact, whatever he
could get hold of. And, besides these beasts, he had a crow, who had
learnt from him how to talk so well that he imitated in many things the
voice of Giovanni Antonio himself, particularly in replying to anyone
who knocked at the door, as all the Siennese well know. In the same
way, the other creatures were so tame that they were always round about
him in the house, playing the strangest games and the maddest pranks in
the world, so that his house seemed to be a veritable Noah’s Ark.”[10]
Della Valle tells us that his first production while in Siena was a
panel picture of the Virgin nursing the divine Infant, which was placed
above the little organ in the choir of San Francesco, and that it bore
a great resemblance to one of the bas-reliefs done by Jacopo della
Quercia on his fountain in the public square. This picture is now in
the possession of Dr. Richter. Vasari broadly asserts that Sodoma made
studies from Della Quercia’s fountain, and it is not improbable that
these studies were modelled, for later on we find his studio mentioned
as being full of clay and plaster casts, and Riccio, his son-in-law,
inherited a number of these casts from him.[11]
Two of his early panels were done for the Savini family. And the
wood-carver, Antonio Barili--who also made the beautifully carved
panelling for the Piccolomini Library was the author of the frames,
inscribing on one of them his name and date--_Anno Domini MCCCCCI.
Antonio Barilis Senensis opus_ (sic).[12]
These panels had, however, already disappeared from Siena by 1786,
when Della Valle wrote, but he quotes a description of them made by a
previous writer, Alfonzo Landi, who says the first was “three braccia
high and one-and-a-half wide, in which the Virgin is represented
with majestic face and bearing, with her naked child in her arms,
exceedingly delicate and tender. St. John the Baptist, an equally
graceful child, is embraced by the Virgin’s right arm. In the upper
part appears a head of St. Joseph, and with it a hand holding a vase.
A picture of great value for its excellence.” This picture was in
the possession of the Savini for a long time; the widow of the last
representative of the house sold it to a foreigner for 120 scudi, and
all traces of it are now lost.
Of the other picture Landi relates: “In it the Virgin is depicted
seated with the nude Child upon her arm, who appears anxious to receive
the homage of St. John Baptist, also a child, who seems to worship
the infant Christ with his hands crossed upon his breast. Above St.
John Baptist is seen St. Catherine of Siena down to the waist, with the
hands joined holding a lily, and opposite appears a head of St. Joseph.”
There was also in the church of St. Francesco another panel of “Our
Lord bearing the Cross.” It was done for the Buonsignori family
in 1506, and placed in the chapel of which they were the owners.
Unfortunately it perished in the great fire which destroyed so large
a portion of the building in 1655. For the Cinozzi chapel in the same
church Sodoma painted a large altar-piece representing the “Descent
from the Cross.” It is a fine painting of his early time, and was
evidently thought much of by contemporary critics, for it was placed in
the company of pieces by Raphael, Perugino, and Pinturicchio. Vasari,
who, as we know, did not willingly praise Sodoma’s work, was forced,
however, to write with admiration of the beautiful group of women
supporting the Virgin, and the fine figure of the soldier with the
carefully painted reflected lights on helmet and cuirass.
The composition of the picture is the conventional composition of the
period. The Cross with its Hebrew inscription occupies the central
foreground. A broad valley lies behind, bordered to the left by low
blue hills, and a river of some width has carved its course across the
plain, fringed with little castles and clumps of tufty trees. In the
group of women so praised by Vasari we get for the first time a touch
of Sodoma’s peculiar quality, the grace and tenderness in handling
female forms for which he afterwards became so noted.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Accademia, Siena_
THE DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS]
He repeated this group in one of the last pictures of his life, the
“Pietà” in the choir of Pisa Cathedral, but it lacks the sentiment
and the care of the Siena picture. Vasari speaks of this painting as
having been undertaken after Sodoma’s return from Rome, which would
have placed it later than the Monte Oliveto frescoes. Its technique,
however, is in the hard and finished manner of his early years. It was
while designing the frescoes of the Olivetan convent that he seems
to have acquired that larger style in which breadth of treatment and
flowing line became so characteristic. Milanesi and Frizzoni date the
“Descent from the Cross” about 1502. The predella, consisting of five
small scenes from the Passion, is roughly executed and evidently by a
scholar’s hand.
It now hangs in the chief room of the Siena Gallery, and not far from
it is a large _tondo_, or round panel, representing the “Nativity.”
This is painted in tempera and glazed over with oil, and is in
excellent preservation. The infant Christ is laid upon the hem of
the Virgin’s blue mantle. She bends over Him with hands clasped in
adoration, and immediately behind her kneels St. Joseph in a brilliant
drapery of yellow, grasping his staff, while an angel with radiant
wings kneels on the opposite side, holding the little St. John. This
_tondo_ was brought from Lecceto, a hermitage of ancient foundation
twelve kilometres outside Porta San Marco, and apparently it gave
satisfaction to those for whom it was painted, for we find a very
similar composition, made by the master’s own hand, was for many
years in the Scarpa collection at La Motta, in Friuli. It has now
passed into the possession of Signor Antonio Borgogna of Vercelli.
Ignazio Fumagalli, in his _Scuola di Leonardo da Vinci_, has had this
reproduction engraved and published under the name of a Cesare da
Sesto. The painting of _tondi_, or circular panels was particularly
in vogue among the Tuscan artists, and Sodoma appears, in this one,
to have had some reminiscences in his mind of works which he had seen
by Lorenzo di Credi. The broken brickwork, through which a glimpse of
the landscape is seen, the slight, feathery trees, and the grouping of
the figures are very Tuscan in their style, but the colouring, with
its warm lights and transparent shadows is that which he learned in
Lombardy. Vasari, speaking of Cesare da Sesto, tells us that he took
lessons from one Bernazzano, a painter whose individual treatment of
landscape was far more successful than that of figures. It is not
improbable that many of the young men working in Milan during that
epoch may have acquired their peculiar manner of landscape painting
from this little-known master. The close resemblance between the
backgrounds of Gianpietrino, Cesare da Sesto and Sodoma suggest a
strong probability of their having been trained in this branch of art
by the same teacher. Sodoma apparently made a number of these round
pictures at this period. We can trace two of them which came from the
Chigi palace at Siena. One is in Captain Holford’s possession, at
Dorchester House, and represents a “Holy Family, with St. John and Two
kneeling Angels”; the other is an allegorical composition in which two
female figures surrounded by four young children may be intended as
symbolic of Charity. This has passed, I believe, into the possession of
Count Bobriusky. Colonel Cornwall Legh has another _tondo_, in which
St. Elizabeth also appears with the infant St. John.
In an inventory of Sodoma’s possessions taken at his death (February
15th, 1549), there is mention of a number of portraits, including those
of a Saracini lady, another lady of the Toscani family, and of Pandolfo
Petrucci, the would-be tyrant of Siena.
[Illustration:
_Lombardi photo_ _Accademia, Siena_
THE NATIVITY]
CHAPTER II
MONTE OLIVETO
We now come to that series of frescoes in the surrounding country, in
which, as we have already noticed, Sodoma’s artistic personality seems
to have first fully asserted itself. In 1503 he was given his first
important commission, which was to paint in fresco the two end walls of
the little convent of St. Anna in Creta, not far from San Quirico.[13]
He received twenty golden scudi in return for the six large frescoes
and the row of medallions which he left there. On the shorter wall,
facing the entrance, are three scenes representing the miracle of the
loaves and fishes. The most important and the best preserved of these
is the central one, containing the figure of Our Lord in white, with
upraised fingers, blessing the five little loaves which a smiling child
presents to Him. Behind these the group of apostles is densely packed;
the row of heads all the same height stretches across two thirds of the
fresco, giving a sense of congestion which Sodoma in his larger scenes
evidently found it very difficult to avoid. It is a defect he shares
in common with Luini, and it is noticeable, though to a less degree,
in the fresco to the left, where one of the younger apostles is still
offering bread to the already satiated crowd.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Monte Oliveto, Siena_
THE LIFE OF ST. BENEDICT]
In both of these compartments there is a complicated landscape
background, a winding river, low hills with little towns, tall,
feathery trees, such as one sees in spring in Umbria, and in the
central scene a classical arch, evidently copied from some print or
painting of Rome.
The third fresco on this wall is too badly damaged to be clearly seen,
damp and neglect having done their work more or less in all of the
series. Upon the entrance wall, above the door, is a “Pietà,” the dead
Christ wept over by the Virgin, across whose knees He is stretched.
In the right hand fresco of this group Sodoma was possibly inspired
by a remembrance of a design, which had been immensely worked upon,
both by Leonardo himself and by his school, the Virgin and Child with
St. Anne. But instead of placing the Virgin on the knees of St. Anne,
as in Leonardo’s cartoon and in the works of all the other Lombard
masters, Sodoma raised the Virgin’s mother upon a throne approached by
steps, and seated upon these steps the young Mary with her Infant and
two Olivetan brothers at the sides. The colour has peeled terribly,
and the head of Christ is utterly defaced. This scene was enclosed
under a painted portico of rich Renaissance design, which corresponds
with that on the left, where stands St. Bernard, surrounded by six
Olivetan brothers in their white robes. In the soffit of the doorway
is a medallion enclosing a bust of Our Lord, and across the longer
walls of the refectory runs a frieze containing little square scenes
from the life of the Virgin in chiaro-oscuro, and round medallions of
saints, that of Santa Scholastica being one of the best. This frieze
is, however, almost destroyed by the damp.
The successful completion of these works led to his being employed
on a far greater series, that of the cloister of Monte Oliveto. That
important monastery had been founded on the ridge of a deep ravine
in the very heart of the wild tract of country lying round Siena by
Bernardo Tolomei, a young Siennese noble of devout tendencies, who had
been shocked by the corruption among the Benedictine order and had
instituted the reformed branch.
Luca Signorelli had been commissioned to illustrate the life of St.
Benedict in a series of lunettes around the four walls of the cloister,
but he had hardly finished nine of the series when he was called away
in 1498 by the council of the cathedral of Orvieto, to line the lower
part of the chapel of San Brizio with his dramatic presentation of the
Four Last Things. The monks of Monte Oliveto were thus left with their
convent walls unfinished, but the Abbot, one Domenico Airoldi, was from
Lecco, on the Lake of Como, and Vasari says that Sodoma went out to the
monastery to visit his fellow-Lombard. Whether he solicited the order
or not, Frate Domenico appointed him to complete the series. He painted
in all thirty-one frescoes, for which the rate of payment varied,
according to the merit of the painting. He received altogether 241
ducats, about £62, and beside this remuneration in cash he was further
rewarded by a rich suit of clothes, which had belonged to a Lombard
gentleman who had recently entered the order. From a quaint entry in
the Archives (quoted by Milanesi) we learn the details of which this
dress consisted. “A cape, a doublet of velvet, a gabardine of black
velvet, a pair of light purple stockings, a black cap, a hat with a
silken border, a felt riding-cloak, a pair of velvet boots, a sword,
and two embroidered shirts.” In such attire Sodoma introduced his own
portrait into the third fresco.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Monte Oliveto, Siena_
THE LIFE OF ST. BENEDICT]
Besides the five-and-twenty frescoes in the cloister he painted sundry
scenes about the corridors and landings. On the stairs leading to the
dormitory he placed a very interesting “Coronation of the Virgin,”
within a _vesica_. Christ is in mauve and red, bending forward to place
the crown upon the Virgin’s brow, she being in white with a pale grey
mantle. The face of Our Lord is particularly beautiful. Below is a
pale landscape and the shield of the Olivetan order. On the wall of
the archway leading from the church into the cloister is a fresco of
“Christ bearing the Cross,” in which again the artist has remembered
the traditions of his Lombard training. The figure is a three-quarter
one, the face turned over the left shoulder. The flesh-tints are warm
and vivid, and there is a good deal of hatching on the muscles. A
purple drapery wraps the loins, and a soldier immediately behind Him
strikes Him with a sword. This figure has a good deal of pathos, but
perhaps there is more dignity in the fresco of “Christ bound to the
Column” which faces it. This is but a variation of the theme which
he treated so remarkably later on, and we may notice how invariably
Sodoma succeeded when it was a question of portraying Our Lord under
conditions of mental suffering. Here, too, He is almost nude, save
for the pale muslin girth; the hands are bound behind Him to the
flecked marble pillar; there is a light mauve sky behind, and faintly
indicated green hills. On the opposite lintel is a fresco of San
Bernardo in the act of establishing the Olivetan order, over the door
of the Father-General’s apartments is a “Madonna with St. Peter and St.
Michael,” and on one of the staircases an inferior “Pietà.”
The frescoes in the cloister necessitated great breadth of treatment
and a more monumental form of composition than anything he had yet
done. It was the severest training that he could have, and should have
brought out all his decorative faculties, but that he was hampered by
the colourlessness of his subject.
The greater number of the scenes consisted of only the figures of
white-robed monks, and Sodoma had to avoid the violent contrast
which would have occurred had he laid on too vivid colour in these
compartments where secular dress was introducible. The endless groups
of white forms against white convent walls or the pale outlines of
Roman hills could only become works of first-rate merit by virtue of
some pronounced strength in their grouping, and, as we have already
seen, composition was by no means Sodoma’s strongest point.
The earlier frescoes are, for this reason, perhaps the most interesting.
Vasari specially admired these at the four corners, St. Benedict
setting out for Rome on his white charger, followed by his old nurse;
the parents of St. Maurus and St. Placidus bringing their children to
the saint, the introduction of the bad women into the convent, and the
final burning of Monte Cassino by the victorious Goths. In all of these
Sodoma permitted himself the use of deepened colour, and, probably
being on that account more interested in the work, he attained a
greater success in the disposition and general treatment.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Monte Oliveto, Siena_
THE LIFE OF ST. BENEDICT]
Throughout the whole series there are many single heads of striking
power, for instance, St. Benedict reproving the truant monk in No. 13,
and the stern, concentrated face of the mason building the wall in No.
24.
There are some graceful women’s types in No. 19, one of the few
frescoes in which female forms appear. It represents the attempt of the
wicked Fiorenzo to seduce the monks by introducing a score of women of
doubtful character within the convent walls. Sodoma, probably weary
in his artistic soul of treating the eternal white dresses of the
brothers, and delighted to get a chance of drawing nude figures, put in
some of these women undraped. With what grace and tenderness he could
handle the female form we may judge from his Eve in the “Descent into
Hades,” or the various studies for the Leda (considered a copy by Dr.
Richter) of the Borghese Gallery.
His fresco of “Christ bound to the Column” in the Siena Gallery,
and the famous “St. Sebastian” of the Uffizi, as well as the sundry
drawings he has left of studies for dead Christs, not only attest to
a great knowledge of anatomy but to a sentiment of the beauty and
divineness of the human form which is almost Greek in spirit.
The monks, however, not quite able to comprehend the painter’s serene
delight in the pure outlines of human limb and muscle, insisted on
having the figures draped, and Sodoma was set to alter his own work.
But the grace of these figures is apparent through their draperies, and
the combination of colour most harmonious. Behind them is a graceful
loggia, a classical arch and colonnade in the centre, and to the left
St. Benedict leans over a balcony to exhort them.
The first fresco of all, where St. Benedict leaves the paternal roof,
is a very charming one. The young saint in blue robe and flying orange
mantle, is mounted upon a rearing white horse. Behind him his nurse in
pink, follows more sedately upon an ass. To the left stands the father
in cap and gown of red, and the young mother in stately black garb,
leading the tiny sister by the hand. There are not too many figures
here to confuse the eye, and the colouring is most delicate. In the
middle distance, to the right, rises the town of Norcia, rich in towers
and battlements.
In all of these outdoor scenes, Sodoma has obviously taken pleasure
in the landscape, and we see, too, that on every possible opportunity
he had been happy to introduce animals into the groups. In No. 3,
the episode of the broken sieve, he has painted his own portrait in
the figure of the tall youth just outside the door. He has on the
gaudy clothes, the marvellous yellow mantle and red stockings, of the
Milanese who had become a monk. But he could not paint his own likeness
without that of his constant companions, the pet crow, whom he had
taught to speak, and the two badgers, and the goose and great white
swan, in the background.
Under each of these frescoes he painted two medallions, containing
fancy portraits of the various generals of the order, the only genuine
one being that of Fra Domenico of Lecco. But these getting spoiled in
the course of time and the eyes effaced, Fra Antonio Bentivoglio of
Bologna had them washed out altogether.
The series finished, Sodoma found himself back again at Siena,
surrounded by his badgers, and his marmosets, and all that herd of
animal life which Vasari despised him so for keeping.
Possibly at this time, too, was painted that much-disputed female
portrait at the Städel Institute, Frankfort, over which the old and the
modern school of criticism still wages a lively war.
Dr. Bode, in his _Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft_,[14] believes
it to be a northern production, and has attributed it to the Flemish
painter, Jan Scorel.
The compilers of the official catalogue of the gallery, acknowledging
in it somewhat of the Italian manner, have, at any rate, granted it to
be by Sebastiano del Piombo. It was Signor Morelli who first proclaimed
it to be a genuine work of Sodoma, a portrait, probably, of some young
Siennese gentlewoman, decked out in the jewellery of hand-wrought
gold, in which the descendants of the Etruscan race yet preserve their
hereditary skill.
Morelli draws our attention to the following characteristics, and as we
shall find them repeated in most of his work it may not be superfluous
to enumerate them here:
“1. The hands have tapering fingers, the knuckles being often
only indicated by a kind of dimple. The hand in the Frankfort
portrait should be compared with the hand of the young king in
the right of Sodoma’s fine altar-piece, the ‘Adoration of the
Magi’ in the church of St. Agostino in Siena; with the hand of
Eve in the fresco of the ‘Descent into Hades’ in the public
gallery at Siena, and with the hand of the Madonna in two other
pictures, one in the possession of Mme. Ginoulhiac at Milan,
the other in the Morelli collection.
“2. The eyes are almond-shaped. The characteristic is met with
in all Sodoma’s pictures: in the portrait at Frankfort, in the
‘Madonna with St. Leonard’ in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena, in
the ‘Adoration of the Magi,’ in St. Agostino, and in the fresco
in S. Domenico, both in that city; in the so-called ‘Madonnone’
at Vaprio, and in the frescoes in the Farnesina at Rome; as
also in the following drawings:--the head of a young man
crowned with laurel, and the Madonna with the Child who holds
a cat in His arms, both in the Uffizi--the last named being
ascribed to Leonardo,--and the study for the head of Leda--a
pen drawing at Windsor (Grosvenor Gallery Publication, 50).
“3. This landscape consists generally of a broad well-watered
plain, with groups of low trees. He often introduces on one
side a hill, with buildings, towers, Roman temples and arches.
Landscape backgrounds of this description occur in the female
portrait at Frankfort, in the picture with the ‘Madonna and St.
Leonard’ in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena, in the ‘Adoration of
the Magi’ in S. Agostino, in the ‘St. Sebastian’ of the Uffizi,
and elsewhere. I may supplement the characteristic of Sodoma
which I have just mentioned by a few more: _quod abundat non
viciat_.
“4. The ear in the female portrait at Frankfort is similar
in form to those in his other works. It should be compared
with the ears in the following pictures:--with those of St.
Leonard in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena, of St. Joseph in St.
Agostino, of a halbardier with his back to the spectator in the
‘Crucifixion’ in the public gallery at Siena, and with those
of one of Alexander the Great’s attendants in the fresco in
the Farnesina. The children in Sodoma’s pictures have always,
however, a more rounded form of ear.
“5. Sodoma’s treatment of hair is also peculiar to himself.
In female heads it is often arranged in crisp waves on the
temples, as in the portrait at Frankfort. We meet with this
characteristic in the following works:--the ‘Lucretia’ in the
Kestner Museum, the ‘Roxana’ in the Farnesina, the ‘Madonnone’
at Vaprio, the Madonna belonging to Mme. Ginoulhiac at Milan,
the pen drawing in the head of Leda (Grov. Gall. Pub. n. 50)
and the pen drawings under the name of Leonardo at Chatsworth
(Braun, 51) and in the Uffizi (No. 421, Braun, 448(1)). These
are some of his leading traits. We shall call attention to
others as we proceed.”
CHAPTER III
ROME
It is certain that Sodoma left Monte Oliveto more fully in possession
of his faculties as an artist than when he went there. He had left the
mediæval manner behind him, and might now take rank among the moderns.
He is entirely modern in the fresco in the Vatican, which is the next
work which we can trace.
In 1507 there arrived in Siena, Agostino Chigi, treasurer to Julius
II., rich beyond the dreams of avarice, extravagant beyond the limits
of good taste. Of him it is related that, after each banquet given to
the Pope at his villa in Trastevere, the whole dinner-service, whether
of silver or not, was cast with the refuse into the Tiber. He possessed
the duty on salt, and the alum-pits of the Papal States, and drew from
them some 70,000 ducats annually.
Rome was just then the seat of very considerable artistic activity.
Perugino had been set by Sixtus IV., to decorate, in company with
Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, and Signorelli, the walls of the Sistine
Chapel, and Pinturicchio, commanded by Alexander VI. to paint the
Borgia chambers. Julius II. who now ascended the Pontifical chair was
furthermore connected with the ducal house of Urbino, a centre of
courtly culture, where connoisseurship in art ranked as a necessary
qualification. His was the ambition, not only to extend the temporal
power, but to render the Eternal City as beautiful through works of
art as Augustus had done through the acquisition of valuable marble.
Michelangelo was now bidden leave his colossal tomb and commence
the ceiling of the Sistine, and the leading artists of the day were
employed on the Vatican chambers.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_ _Vatican, Rome_
CEILING IN THE CAMERA DELLA SEGNATURA]
Sodoma, taken to Rome by Chigi, and perhaps further recommended
by Bramantino, whom he had known in Milan,[15] was now commanded
to paint the walls and ceiling of the Camera della Segnatura. The
octagon in the middle of the ceiling, wherein bounding cherubs are
shown in every possible attitude giving full play to all his power in
foreshortening, is, in every sense, a work of the later Renaissance,
intrinsically contemporary with the medallions put there later on
by Raphael. He had, as we have seen, been commissioned to decorate
the whole chamber, and his are the Arabesques which form a framework
to the four famous symbolic figures. His, too, are the eight little
scenes in _grisaille_ which fill up the spaces between the medallions,
scenes which have not perhaps very great individual merit, but which
take their place adequately in the general decorative scheme, and
once formed a background to the four figures painted there by Sodoma
himself. Vasari says that it was the artist’s own inattention and
idleness which caused the Pope to have them obliterated, and Raphael
set to paint his allegories in their stead. It is equally probable that
the change came about from a desire for artistic harmony, and that the
principal pictorial elements in the ceiling should be done by the same
hand which had decorated the walls. Raphael, however, with the eye of
a genuine artist, saw that Sodoma’s work was good, and he contrived
to leave intact the central fresco and the decorative panels in
_grisaille_. Raphael further painted Sodoma’s portrait next his own in
the “School of Athens.” The man in white, with white head-gear, is now
admitted to be not Perugino, as formerly supposed, who was a very much
older man at the time, but the young author of the ceiling ornament.[16]
Curiously enough, this central space, with its foreshortened and fleshy
cherubs sustaining the Della Rovere coat-of-arms, has been attributed,
by a German school of critics, to Melozzo da Forlì, an opinion which
existing documents disprove,[17] and which the internal evidence of
technique should be sufficient to disperse. The grounds for this
curious theory seem to consist chiefly in the fact that Sixtus IV.,
who called Melozzo da Forlì to Rome, was a Della Rovere, and that the
coat-of-arms refers to him, and not to Julius.
Another work which is attributed to Sodoma, and also assigned by
Morelli to this epoch, that of his first Roman visit, is the little
panel in the Brera, No. 14515. A very sweet-faced and distinctly
Lombard Madonna is seated upon a bank where columbine and wild parsley
spring. Behind her a field stretches away to the river, which flows
from a limpid lake. The lake is bounded by transparent, bluish
mountains, rendered more blue and more transparent by the flaming
sunset light. The artist was evidently impressed by the gorgeous
natural colouring, and has concentrated himself upon a study in tone,
gemlike and brilliant, further enhanced by the quality of the wood on
which it was painted.
[Illustration:
_Alinari Photo_ _Brera Gallery, Milan_
THE MADONNA AND CHILD]
The shadows are all clear and transparent, and the modelling of the
Virgin’s face very delicately done. This picture was in a private
collection somewhere in Germany, and was put up for sale in 1890 at a
public auction at Cologne. Signor Morelli adjudged it to be by Sodoma
and persuaded Herr Habich of Cassel to purchase it. It was afterwards
bought by the directors of the Brera Gallery, and now hangs in the same
room as Raphael’s “Sposalizio.” It has all the touches characteristic
of Sodoma in his extremely Lombard period, an exaggeration almost of
the manner of Leonardo and Luini. Despite the clearness of its shadows,
which Morelli takes to be a sign of Sodoma’s early work, we should
be more inclined to assign it to a later period, perhaps that of the
Borghese “Leda,” and the smaller “Madonna” of Turin.
What became of Sodoma after his dismissal from Rome is uncertain. He
probably returned to Siena with Agostino Chigi, and in the October of
1510, he married the daughter of the prosperous Luca Galli, landlord
of the “Crown and Goose.” Milanesi found among the archives an entry
concerning her dowry, which was not inconsiderable, reaching, as it
did, the sum of 450 florins.[18]
In 1511 was born his only son Apelles, to whom the painter Genga stood
godfather. Apelles died in infancy, and the following year saw the
birth of a daughter, Faustina, who afterwards married her father’s
pupil Bartolommeo Neroni, commonly known as Riccio.
Vasari makes some allusions to domestic unhappiness and says that his
wife finally left him and supported herself, but we can find no other
authority to this statement. In 1531 and 1541 she was still living with
her husband, and if it be true, as Vasari says, that when old “he had
nothing to live upon, and no one to take care of him,” it was probably
because his wife was dead.
He was evidently doing well, for in June 1511 he threw into prison
Vincenzo Tamagni, another painter, who owed him a sum of twenty-five
golden ducats,[19] and in 1513 he ran three horses in the Palio, the
annual race which still takes place in the public square of Siena
during the month of August.
One of these horses he apparently bought from Agostino dei Bardi, for
Milanesi found among the archives a notice to the effect that, “on the
9th of November 1513 Johannis Antonius Jacobe dei Verzé di Savoia,
having had a horse from Messer Agostino dei Bardi, valued at thirty
golden ducats, undertook to paint, within the space of eight months,
either the façade of his house, or a panel for an altar-piece, as he
should choose.”[20] Another entry gives the names and description
of these same horses run by the fashionable painter. Bardi chose
the decoration of his house-front, a sign significant of the growing
Renaissance spirit, but even during Vasari’s lifetime the fresco
was peeling, and has now entirely disappeared. There is a large
altar-piece, done originally for a church at Colle in Val D’Elsa,
which, in spite of the audacious restoration which has almost obscured
the distinctive character of Sodoma’s work, is assigned by Dr. Frizzoni
to this epoch. It represents the Virgin and Child upon a high marble
throne, two flying angels hold back the curtains of the canopy, and
below are a group of four saints, Lucy, Catharine of Alexandria,
Jerome, and John.
[Illustration:
_Brogi photo_ _Turin Gallery_
THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS]
It was bought by the Turin Gallery for 1200 scudi from Cav. Rosselli
del Turco of Florence.
Frizzoni says: “This is a work meriting particular attention for its
uncommon merits, so much so that one may believe it to have been
executed in a moment of fortunate inspiration and in the full power of
his faculties.”[21]
The fresco of St. Ives, on the wall of the prison chapel at San
Gemignano was executed during 1507, most probably before his
visit to Rome. He received the commission from Giovanni Battista
Macchiavelli, who was then Podestà,[22] but apparently it was done in
a hurry, as a kind of artistic parenthesis. It still exists, though
considerably damaged, and we can distinguish within the larger of its
divisions--for Sodoma again carried out the portico idea so much in
vogue at Siena--St. Ives standing among a crowd of clients to whom he
administers justice. Two fat _putti_, now hardly traceable, stand in
the foreground, holding the Macchiavelli escutcheon. In 1513 he was
paid 142 lire by the commune of San Gemignano for another fresco, that
of the Madonna enthroned between San Gemignano and St. Nicholas of
Bari. This fresco was on the wall of a loggia facing the church of the
Collegiata, but with the action of frost and rain the colour has almost
left it and very little but the outline remains. The two _putti_,
flying above the Virgin’s head, are still in fair preservation.[23]
Between 1513 and 1515, when we find him again in Siena, Sodoma is
believed to have been at Rome, this time in the actual service of
Agostino Chigi, who was about to marry Leonora, the daughter of
Girolamo Piccolomini. He had erected for his private dwelling the
palace on the right bank of the Tiber, now called the Farnesina.
Whether this fine piece of architecture be the work of Baldassare
Peruzzi or of Raphael is somewhat uncertain. At any rate Chigi employed
the greatest artists of the day upon its interior decoration; Raphael
designed the myth of Psyche for the ground floor hall, Peruzzi painted
the ceiling of a smaller room, Sebastian del Piombo and Michelangelo
left frescoes upon various walls.
The palace was certainly built and partially decorated by 1510, and
most authorities are agreed that it was between the years 1513 and
1515, when he was back in Siena, that Sodoma paid his second visit
to the capital, and that the Farnesina frescoes are not, as Vasari
asserted, contemporaneous with his ceiling in the Vatican.[24]
In Chigi’s house he enjoyed the most brilliant society, that of the
leading artists and some of the most notable men of letters of the
day. Leonardo was in Rome at the time, and with Pietro Aretino Sodoma
contracted a friendship which lasted into old age. There is, among
Aretino’s published letters, one addressed to Sodoma,[25] in which he
speaks of the “cordial affection of love with which we were wont to
embrace when Rome and the house of Agostino Chigi so delighted us that
we should have been furious with anyone who had ventured to tell us
that we could exist an hour without one another.”
[Illustration:
_Farnesina Palace, Rome_
ALEXANDER AND ROXANA]
[Illustration:
_Brogi photo_ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
STUDY FOR ROXANA
(In the Farnesina Palace)]
To Sodoma was allotted the task of painting, in the upper storey,
certain scenes from the life of Alexander the Great, his conquest of
Darius and his marriage with Roxana.
The Roxana scene is about twice as long as it is high, filled with
architectural details, of which the bride’s couch, with its heavily
carved columns and cornices, is the most conspicuous portion.
An open loggia to the right, with polished marble columns, gives ample
opportunity for displaying his knowledge of perspective, and beyond
these is a landscape of a hill-town, a winding river, and an old bridge.
To the left is Roxana’s couch, on which she is seated, while three
winged _putti_ pull off her sandals and assist her with her toilet.
Behind her two female attendants and a negro bring ewers of water.
Alexander stands before the couch, offering his royal crown to his
bride, and two tall figures, probably Hephæstion and Hymen, for one of
them bears a torch, stand under the colonnade. On the ground beside
them, in the roof of the loggia and above Roxana’s couch, fly _putti_
in every attitude of jubilant exaltation.
There are a good many drawings for this fresco scattered about Europe,
and nearly all of them have been attributed to Raphael, probably
because he was known to have treated the subject in much the same
manner. Both he and Sodoma based their composition about a classical
description of an antique painting by Aetion.
There is a pen and ink drawing in the Uffizi (No. 1479), in which
Roxana is seated nude upon her couch, while one of the _putti_ takes
off her sandals and another unpins her veil. This has a signature,
now believed to be a forgery, _de Rafel da Urbin_. Another version
of the same group is in the Albertina at Vienna, once believed to be
Raphael’s, but now officially recognised as being by Sodoma, and there
is a pen and ink study in the Esterhazy collection at Buda Pesth, for
the figure of Roxana standing. This has also been finally identified as
Sodoma’s.
The Christ Church Library, Oxford, has a rough sketch for Roxana’s
couch, where three wingless _putti_ trail festoons of flowers about
the baldacchino. Sir J. C. Robinson, in his _Critical Account
of the Drawings of Michelangelo and Raffaello in the University
Galleries_,[26] refuses to see in this study any resemblance to the
style of Raphael, and classes it among the unknown drawings of
the early part of the sixteenth century, and most probably as Baccio
Bandinelli’s. Passavant puts it down to “the school of Raphael.”
Morelli and Frizzoni consider it a genuine Sodoma.
[Illustration:
_Farnesina Palace, Rome_
THE FAMILY OF DARIUS]
On the opposite wall we have Alexander receiving the vanquished family
of Darius. This fresco is full of figures, and has his usual defect of
nearly all the heads being on the same level. Under a tent, attached
to the branches of neighbouring trees, the conqueror stands, while
before him, with outstretched arms, the mother of the fallen Persian
bows before him, and behind her follow the wife and children, and a
number of women servants. Behind Alexander a group of armed men wait
at a little distance. A portion of the bridge spanning a river, and a
feathery tree, carry the eye into the background.
In both of these frescoes we find the Lombard manner more and more,
and the fact that Leonardo was himself in Rome at this time may serve
to explain it. Side by side with this tendency, however, we find a
more or less direct imitation of Raphael. His drawings for the Roxana
fresco have a good deal of the “round” manner of that master, and it is
not without a good show of reason, that they have in most cases been
attributed to him. Naturally, the broader style of painting introduced
by the great innovator of the fifteenth century, was bound to affect
the whole art-world, but in Sodoma’s case direct imitation of him is to
be traced but in a few things, and Raphael’s influence does not appear
to have been a permanent one. Curiously enough, though in Rome at the
very moment when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel, and
probably moving in the same social circle, Sodoma was careful not to
allow himself to be in any way drawn into the circle of his influence,
and though we occasionally find reminiscences of Raphael in his later
work--the frescoes in San Bernardino and the “Birth of the Virgin” in
the Carmine--there is nothing among his works to remind us that he ever
saw a painting of Buonarotti.
The third fresco in the Farnesina, that of Vulcan bending over the fire
to forge his arrows, was for a long time unauthenticated, but Frizzoni
believes it to be also by Sodoma, an opinion not shared by other
critics. Another fresco, on the fourth wall of this room, representing
the young Alexander breaking in Bucephalus, much defaced by
restoration, is claimed by Kugler as Sodoma’s, and Frizzoni claims for
him the whole cycle. During this, his second Roman visit, he must have
painted the panel in the Spada Gallery representing “St. Christopher
carrying the infant Christ.” There is a rough sketch for this among
the drawings in the Uffizi, in red chalk, No. 1986, and another, more
finished, of the Morelli collection at Bergamo.
Prince Mario Chigi has a small, highly-coloured panel filled with
struggling figures. It had been greatly retouched, and a few years ago
the upper coats of paint were carefully removed, revealing the original
work, which Morelli unhesitatingly ascribed to Sodoma. It is obviously
an episode from Roman history, and has been called the “Rape of the
Sabines,” but Frizzoni thinks it more probably the picture referred to
in the inventory quoted by Della Valle,[27] in which an unknown citizen
of Siena catalogues, among the pictures left him by his father--
“A picture by Sodoma, representing Numitor, who condemns the mother of
Romulus and Remus to death with her children--scudi 100.”
There is a vulgar pen and ink sketch in the Uffizi, unsigned, which is
attributed to Sodoma, and is believed to be a study for this panel.
About this time Signor Morelli believes him to have painted the
original of the “Leda,” No. 434, in the Borghese Gallery. This panel
was for a long time thought to be by Leonardo until Morelli, finding
many drawings for it in the different European galleries, which he
unhesitatingly ascribed to Sodoma, concluded that this was the picture
for which these studies had been made. He held this opinion for about
fifteen years, until the picture was moved into a better light, and
then it was suggested to him by Dr. Richter, who had carefully examined
it, that it was not an original, but most probably a very good old copy
of one by Sodoma, now lost. Of these drawings in pen and ink, one, he
says, is at Weimar under the name of Leonardo. It is a kneeling figure
of Leda bending to the left towards the crouching swan, while the
twins, Castor and Pollux, lie beneath some rushes to her right.
In another at Chatsworth (also given to Leonardo) Leda’s head is
upright, and the swan raising its neck towards her, while the two
children have become four. In both of these the shading is done with
curved lines across the figure with exceedingly little cross-hatching.
At Windsor there is another pen drawing of the full length figure
(Grov. Gall. Pub. 50), and this is probably the study from which the
picture was made. It is so much like Raphael’s work that it is still
generally considered as his. Morelli, however, has written: “Looking
more closely at the drawing we cannot fail to recognise the spirit and
the hand of Sodoma in the form of the feet, the full, fleshy knees, the
almond-shaped eyes, and the arrangement of the hair, which is quite
unlike Raphael, and the fine strokes of the pen.”[28]
There is also at Windsor a sheet of studies for the head, in four
different positions, with elaborately coiled and braided hair. It
passes for a Leonardo, but a red chalk drawing in the Ambrosiana, which
gives the head and shoulders, is rightly ascribed to Sodoma.
Lomazzo, in his _Trattato della Pittura_, quoted Leonardo as having
made a Leda with the swan, but we believe that no well-authenticated
picture by Leonardo treating this subject is in existence, although
there are several ascribed to him in Germany, and a large number of
drawings in different parts of Europe. The subject may have been given
by him as an academical study in the same way as the much repeated
composition of the Virgin upon the knees of St. Anne.
A small “Madonna and Child” in the Turin Gallery is believed to belong
to these years of Sodoma’s life. It has warm colouring, but is heavy
and dark in the shadows. The Madonna holds the Infant Christ, who plays
with a bird, and St. Joseph, a clear cut, clean-shaven face, peers over
her left shoulder at the Child.
There is a replica of this in the Munich Gallery (No. 1073) which
Morelli says is superior in freshness and spontaneity. We have not seen
it, but can readily believe this observation, as the Turin Madonna has
been heavily retouched.
CHAPTER IV
SUCCESS AT SIENA
Milanesi believes that it was soon after his second Roman visit that
Sodoma went first to stay at Piombino, a little seaport town at the
extreme end of the promontory of Populonia. Its prince was one of the
Appiano family, originally from Pisa, who had obtained possession of
the land towards the close of the fourteenth century. He, too, was
anxious not to be behindhand in the culture of the fine arts, and to
his court had come years before, the great Leonardo. It may have been
through Leonardo that Sodoma became known to him: he certainly spent
many years under the roof of James V., though we are unable to trace
any work which he may have done there. From Piombino he apparently went
straight to Florence, to the yearly races, armed with an introduction
from James of Piombino to the ruling Medici.
The letter, dated June 18th, 1515, recommends “JOAN ANTONIO DE’ AVERZÈ,
his servant and bearer of the letter, who goes to Florence, to run his
horses.”[29]
The Pope, Leo X., was also in Florence at this moment, on his way to
Bologna to meet the French king, Francis I., and Sodoma speaks, in one
of his letters to the Duke of Ferrara, as having been in his company.
However, he received no commission from those in high places, and
seems to have been generally disappointed at his reception in Florence.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Church of Monte Oliveto, near Florence_
THE LAST SUPPER]
But to the little Olivetan monastery, outside the Porta San Frediano,
had reached some record of his doings at the parent foundation near
Siena, and the Abbot Brandolini set him to fresco the façade of the
refectory. He left there the “Last Supper,” which was overlaid with
whitewash almost directly after its execution, and only brought to
light a few years ago. Fragments of it had been seen by M. Eugène Müntz
more than twenty years ago, but the fresco had been neither entirely
uncovered nor identified.
It must have originally consisted of thirteen figures. In those five
which remain we find skilful drawing, and, despite the great masses of
colour which the plaster has carried away, we can perceive that the
painting was both deliberate and careful. Vasari’s blame, therefore,
appears to be rather without explanation, “for,” he says, “these
figures turned out so ill that he was made fun of for his fooleries by
those who expected something better from him.”
The figure of Christ, though not as full of expression as Sodoma
generally painted Him, is noble and dignified, Judas has more personal
vigour, and here again is an instance of the artist concentrating his
faculties upon the character which happened to interest him most at
the moment, and treating with a certain superficiality others which
should be of equal importance. Sodoma was vexed with the abbot of the
monastery, annoyed generally at the reception which had been given him
in Florence, and he was probably more in a mood to paint Judas than
the lofty character of Christ. This is so speaking a face that it is,
without doubt, a portrait; the nose and lips are firmly modelled, the
eye full of character. The hair is very characteristic, the close,
crisp curls of the Lombard school, which Sodoma continued to paint up
to the very end.
At Our Lord’s right hand, St. Peter, with upraised knife, propounds
his astonishing question, “Lord, is it I?” St. John slumbers on the
left shoulder of Christ, a young and placid face with the absence
of expression common in sleep. Behind Judas an older apostle looks
thoughtfully on.
In this undisputed work of Sodoma’s we may observe his particular care
in the drawing and modelling of the hands and feet, in Judas’ foot,
with the high lights on heel and muscle, and the strained tendons of
the ankle. It is one of his least-known frescoes and deserves a higher
reputation than has hitherto been accorded to it.
It was probably for quite other than an artistic reason that the abbot
caused this fresco to be whitewashed. At the time of the races a
scandal became attached to the name of the painter, and it was perhaps
thought advisable to disown any connection with him and to quickly
cover up his work. Bazzi had not been received as cordially as he had
expected, and the Florentines may have treated him to some of these
epithets of doubtful decency which even their literary men of high
standing were not averse to showering upon one another. As it happened,
his horse was the winner of the race, and when the boys who ran behind
the trumpets proclaiming aloud the name of the proprietor of the
victorious horse came to him to ask who he was, he replied by a coarse
witticism meant to reflect upon the Florentines, but which instead
became a source of discredit to himself.
He was obviously free and easy in his manners, careless of appearances
and presumably not more moral than most artists of his time, and that
he had a love for dubious jests is proved by the inventory of his
household goods which he drew up for the Siennese commission in 1531
and which Ugurgieri copied. Nevertheless, we believe, that Vasari, in
relating this anecdote, and giving to it a scandalous significance, has
done him grave injustice. This name came to be universally accepted,
and he is even entered by it in the Archives of the town. He signed his
own letters _Sodona_, and was finally so addressed by the Signoria.
The next few years saw the production of a great fresco at Siena in the
cloister of San Francesco. This represented the “Judgment of Pilate”
and the “Flagellation of Our Lord.” Under an open colonnade was to be
found the Hebrew judicial court, Pilate surrounded by a number of angry
Jews, and, a little to the side, the figure of the bound and buffeted
Christ.
The whole painting suffered terribly from damp and exposure and even in
Della Valle’s time the Christ was protected by glass. By degrees the
remaining portion of the fresco peeled off, and then disappeared the
portrait of Sodoma himself, painted, Vasari says, beardless and with
long hair. In 1842 the figure of Christ was sawn away from the wall and
taken to the public gallery, where it is now enclosed within a frame.
A highly-polished marble column breaks the circle of an arch, through
which one sees a pale, watery sky and faintly indicated sea and shore.
The figure is nude, save for the mauve drapery about the loins, and
to right and left are the fragments of two red arms, those of the
tormenting soldiers. The head is singularly noble and dignified, and
the torso modelled with the delicacy of sentiment which is so marked
in his sketches in the Uffizi, the dead Christ on the knees of the
Virgin, and the dead Christ in the sepia drawing of the Trinity. Rio,
speaking of this fresco, says: “Pour le Christ il faut une profondeur
de sentiment et une élévation de l’âme dont le superficial Bazzi ne fut
jamais capable.” This is an opinion which we cannot endorse, for if
there was a subject which Bazzi treated with reverence and profundity
it was that of the adult Christ.
The man himself was full of turbulent passion, full of artistic
waywardness, unbalanced often in his value and estimate of life; but
that he was altogether superficial and without reverence no one can
believe who has studied his work with an unprejudiced mind.
The representation of physical suffering borne with calm was a
constantly recurring subject among the later Greeks; the early
Christian conception of the Crucifixion and Martyrdoms is but too
familiar in the catacomb frescoes and the contorted forms of Neri da
Bicci or Margaritone. In the one we have a stoical indifference to
pain, in the other an agonizing susceptibility to the physical side of
it.
Sodoma’s great fresco touches neither extreme. It has all the godlike
dignity of a Greek hero, all the human pathos of a mediæval martyr.
It is, perhaps, most akin in art to those Græco-Roman statues, the
Dying Gladiator and the Laocoon, works which fused the dual elements
of two contrasting art-ideals. The Laocoon and the Gladiator came
into the world at a culminating point, when the perfect technique of
pagan art was being leavened by a new sense of spiritual intensity.
The work of Sodoma and some of his contemporaries marks also a central
transitional point in the refluent movement, retaining the sentiment
of mediæval devotion with the added quality of accurate and beautiful
form. Sodoma’s Christ is silent, the lips are parted in the intensity
of pain, the flesh upon the arm is livid where the tense ropes bind it
to the column, and where the thorny crown has pressed into the brow
great drops of blood still ooze. Yet it is the intellectual suffering
of the figure which strikes and holds one’s attention. Far greater than
the personal insult, overpowering all sense of momentary pain, there
is present a touch of the universal sorrow, of the _Weltschmerz_ which
the prophet must feel. In this work the painter touched his most ideal
creation.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Accademia, Siena_
CHRIST BOUND TO THE COLUMN]
To the same period, 1517-18, should belong one or more oil paintings
of “Lucretia.” Vasari mentions a nude “Lucretia stabbing herself,”
which he did for Pope Leo X., and for which, in return, he was made
_Cavalliere di Cristo_. In a letter to the Marquis Francesco Gonzaga,
dated 1518, Sodoma refers to a “Lucretia” which he had painted for him,
but which, being seen by Giuliano de’ Medici, was promptly bought by
that Prince, and it is most likely that this was the picture of which
Vasari spoke, and which so pleased the Pontiff that he created the
artist a knight. Dr. Richter considers this painting as lost. Signor
Milanesi, editing Vasari’s life, declares, however, that this is the
identical “Lucretia” which was taken to Hanover by Herr von Kestner,
who had been ambassador to Rome, and which has now been presented with
the rest of his collection to the town of Hanover. But Dr. Frizzoni,
who saw it in 1869, criticising it by the newer method, and taking into
consideration its clear shadows and rather marked outlines, as well as
a considerable difference in the composition, believes it to be the
work of an earlier period, thus agreeing with Richter as to the total
disappearance of the Papal “Lucretia.”
Vasari also mentions another picture of the same subject done by Sodoma
for Assuero Rettori da San Martino, and which may not improbably be the
one which now hangs in the Turin Gallery. It is very much restored,
and was generally considered as a Gianpietrino until Morelli assigned
it to Sodoma; and I find Frizzoni mentioning yet another “Lucretia”
attributed to Sodoma, a panel, much blackened, which now belongs to
Herr Weber of Hamburg. That he should produce three or four slightly
varying copies of the same figure need not surprise us, seeing that the
original not only greatly pleased the Pope, but was even praised by
his enemy Vasari. Also, classical and mythological pictures were more
largely bought just then by private individuals than religious ones.
The “Charity” at Berlin most probably belongs to this date. It is an
oblong picture, consisting of a single female figure, clothed in a
heavy drapery, with downcast eyes and crisply curled hair. She holds
one infant in her arms, and two plump children cling about her knees;
the landscape is singularly transparent and very like that of the St.
George at Richmond. It was formerly attributed to Baldassare Peruzzi,
and to Morelli we owe its enumeration among the works of Sodoma.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Accademia, Siena_
HEAD OF AN APOSTLE]
In 1515, before coming down to Florence for the races, the committee
directing the works of the Siennese cathedral commissioned him to cast
in bronze two figures of Apostles for the high altar, and also to give
free lessons in drawing, to four young men attached to the works.[30]
We do not find that these bronzes were ever cast; however, he must have
had some skill in modelling, for his studio was said to be full of
models in plaster and clay.
On the 11th of January 1515, Matteo di Giuliano di Lorenzo Balducci
apprenticed himself for six years to our painter, agreeing for four
years to pay him annually at the August festival of St. Mary the sum of
twenty ducats, and for the remaining two years to work with and under
his master. In return Sodoma was to teach him, to pay his expenses,
clothe and shoe him suitably.[31] Of this Balducci we know little, and
his few works have not the mark of genius. The master had other pupils
working directly under him, Girolamo Magagni, called Giomo del Sodoma,
Lorenzo Brazzi, called Rustico, and Bartolommeo Neroni, nicknamed
Riccio, who not only married the painter’s daughter, Faustina, but was
associated with him in several works. Riccio was the author of one
of the Monte Oliveto frescoes, and of a delightful little _Pietà_ in
fresco on the walls of the collegiate church of Asciano.
Besides these, there were one or two men of individual talent, who,
though they may not have formally placed themselves under Sodoma’s
tuition, were glad to learn from him, and, either voluntarily or
insensibly, adopted much of his manner and formed their style upon
his. Of these were Pacchia and Beccafumi, who in 1518 found themselves
associated with him in the decoration of the little oratory near San
Francesco, dedicated to San Bernardino. Sodoma, naturally, was chosen
as the director of these works, and of Beccafumi, who had known him in
Rome, Vasari relates that “having heard Giovanni Antonio of Vercelli
praised as a capable man, he came to Siena, and seeing that he had a
good foundation in drawing, in which he knew the strength of workers in
art to lie, he set himself with much study to follow him, that which he
had already done in Rome not being enough.”[32]
The earliest of the series was the “Birth of the Virgin,” by Pacchia,
then came Sodoma’s “Presentation in the Temple.” A crowd of men and
women are gathered under an open colonnade with classical columns. In
the background the little Virgin is ascending the steps towards the
high priest, but the Child has turned back towards St. Anne, and the
priest is bending forward and has seized her by the shoulders. A group
of women in the left foreground is headed by a graceful figure in blue
and white, while to the left a tall and stalwart youth introduces a
mass of brilliant colour with his deep orange draperies. A fountain
occupies the centre of the court, and the whole is framed by pilasters
enriched with graceful Renaissance ornament.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Oratory of San Bernardino, Siena_
THE SALUTATION OF THE VIRGIN]
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Oratory of San Bernardino, Siena_
THE PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN]
In the second of Sodoma’s frescoes, “The Salutation,” St. Elizabeth
and the Virgin meet within an alcove. The Virgin is bending forward,
and, were the figure upright, would be considerably taller than all
the others. She has heavy draperies of blue, faded to white where the
light strikes. Her face is very tenderly modelled, with a good deal of
hatching in the shadows. St. Elizabeth, kneeling, has gorgeous robes of
green and yellow, Joachim, behind her, wears a white head-dress, and a
woman to the left fills up the need for more distributed colour by a
brick-red dress. This same woman leads a charmingly drawn and carefully
painted child, nude, save for a transparent muslin shirt. The child is,
perhaps, the most concentrated piece of painting in the picture, and is
a charming example of Sodoma’s treatment of _putti_.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Oratory of San Bernardino, Siena_
THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN]
In the “Assumption of the Madonna,” the third fresco, he has adopted
the conventional composition usually employed. An open sarcophagus in
the exact centre, the lines of its perspective running parallel with
the eye, and six disciples on either hand, in graduated heights. Above
them, the Madonna rises in her white robes surrounded by a semicircle
of flying angels. In this broad sweep of two semicircular lines across
the composition we are inevitably reminded of Raphael.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Oratory of San Bernardino, Siena_
THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN]
The last fresco, which stands between the windows, was finished in
1532, after Sodoma had been away from Siena for several years. The
figures in it are more than life-size and are densely packed together.
The white-robed Madonna kneels in the centre, while Christ, in red and
blue, places the crown upon her head. Around them are grouped, Noah,
Adam and Eve, St. John Baptist, and others, and, in a glory above,
hovers the Holy Spirit. In none of these compositions is Sodoma quite
at his best, probably because this more ambitious kind of work was not
what he excelled in. The presence of so many figures evidently confused
him, and in their grouping there is generally a sense of compression,
or else a straggling line which is eminently undecorative. And in all
of them he has singled out special figures for his particular care, the
Madonna and the Child in the “Salutation,” or the three awe-stricken
apostles to the left in the “Assumption,” unfortunately beginning to
peel. The whole colouring of these frescoes is, however, warm, and
the modelling large. The flesh is broadly washed on, with the shadows
boldly hatched, and the dark outline, noticeable in his earlier
frescoes, is far less frequent. There is, however, much carelessness
in the drawing, and we can hardly endorse Vasari’s praise of the three
single figures which fill up the smaller spaces between doors and
windows, St. Francis, St. Anthony of Padua, and St. Louis of Toulouse.
The San Bernardino in the opposite corner, is now admitted to be not by
him, but by Pacchia, as proved by documentary evidence.
The “Adoration of the Magi,” which hangs in the Piccolomini Chapel in
the church of St. Agostino, is believed to have been done about this
time. It is a very large panel, painted in Sodoma’s most brilliant
manner, and especially recommends itself to the consideration of
students in that it exemplifies so very aptly all the leading
characteristics of our painter enumerated by Morelli in connection with
the Städel portrait at Frankfort.
We have the rocky landscape in transparent blue tints, the knight on
horseback, and the tufty, dark-leaved trees. We have the tapering
fingers and the almond eyes, the lips so undefinable at the corners,
and we have the round “eye” to his draperies, as well as the crisp,
almost wiry hair.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Church of San Agostino, Siena_
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI]
This panel was the occasion of a lawsuit which Sodoma lost in 1536; but
it was not therefore necessarily painted in that year, although the
commentators of Vasari so believe. Its whole technique points to an
earlier period, and Frizzoni, judging it by its colouring, its accurate
_compact_ drawing, and the amount of light and atmosphere, puts it back
as early as 1518.
If the head of the shepherd, wedged in between the two tree trunks,
be really Sodoma’s portrait, as tradition asserts, it must certainly
belong to this earlier period when the painter was about forty or
forty-one years of age. The picture has a further historical interest
in the fact that several of the heads are portraits of leading members
of the Piccolomini family,[33] into whose possession the picture passed
early in the sixteenth century.
Sir Francis Cook has, in his gallery at Richmond, a panel which is
perhaps the most delightful example of Sodoma’s art which we have in
this country.
This subject is legendary--St. George, the knight of Cappadocia, in his
contest with the Lycian dragon. It has the same deep, rich tone as the
“Adoration,” a transparent bluish background, a broad river winding
between two hills, with a walled and battlemented town upon its banks.
In the foreground the princess, in her crimson and yellow robe, and
St. George, upon his charger, bent forward in the strenuous pose of
eager and concentrated movement, with red doublet flying in the wind,
head lowered, and lance pointed ready for the charge. The horse too,
apparently shares his master’s excitement, in straining eyes, dilated
nostrils, and open mouth. The foreground is very dark, too dark almost
to be clearly visible at a first glance, but after a while one discerns
the broken tree-stumps, the wet stones and flowing stream, and fresh
green water-weeds, and, lying about on the land, the bones of the
dragon’s former victims.
The whole picture is one glowing bit of colour, not the broad lights
and luminous shadows, such as the Venetians understood by colour, but a
quiet, gemlike glow of subdued warmth. It was painted between 1515 and
1518 for Alfonzo, Duke of Ferrara, just before the artist left Siena on
that untraceable journey of his.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Oratory of San Bernardino, Siena_
ST. LOUIS OF TOULOUSE]
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Oratory of San Bernardino, Siena_
SAN BERNARDINO
By Pacchiarotto]
CHAPTER V
UNKNOWN PERIOD, AND RETURN TO SIENA
After the commencement of the San Bernardino frescoes Sodoma
disappeared from Tuscany, and an amount of uncertainty has gathered
round his doings during the next seven years. There are no more
documents concerning him to be found at Siena till 1525, and the
political condition of the city was just then very unfavourable to
artistic work.
Pandolfo Petrucci, the some-time governor, had died in 1512, and been
interred with princely pomp and honour; but although under his rule
Siena had enjoyed much prosperity and a certain amount of unity between
the rival factions, both Pandolfo and his successor lacked the personal
qualities that might have founded a dynasty. His son, Borghese, seceded
after three years, and the ambitious cardinal-cousin, Raffaello, seized
the reins of government. It was during his ascendancy that Sodoma
vanished from Siena.
It is probable that he went straight to Mantua, for a letter addressed
to the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga in May 1518, speaks of the painter’s
intention to shortly visit him. This letter was found not long ago
among the Mantuan Archives, by Signor Guiseppe Campori, and if Sodoma
carried out the intention which he expressed therein, he probably
spent the summer in the Ducal House of the Gonzaga. On the same
day (May 3rd) he wrote another letter to Alfonzo d’Este, Duke of
Ferrara, suggesting that he should visit him at Ferrara, bringing
with him a certain panel which he had been commissioned to paint by
the duke’s ambassador--the “St. George and the Dragon,” now belonging
to Sir Francis Cook. This letter was found at Modena among the Este
Archives, by Cav. Adolfo Venturi, and there is no reason to doubt
that the visit was paid. There is also an entry among the documents
at Reggio d’Emilia, which mentions one Giovanni Antonio de’ Bazzi of
Parma, a painter, and for the moment citizen of Reggio,[34] who acted
as witness to two deeds drawn up in the November of that year. It is
certainly true that the name of Bazzi was a not uncommon one in Parma,
and we are at a loss to understand why Sodoma should describe himself
as a Parmesan when he had for so long enjoyed the civic rights and
privileges of Siena.
He may have stayed a little time in Parma before proceeding to Reggio,
thus giving rise to a misapprehension, or he may deliberately, for
prudential reasons, have wished to conceal his identity.
Both Herr Jansen and Milanesi believe that the artist here referred to
was our Siennese; but Frizzoni is of opinion that there may have been
another less known and inferior painter of the some name.
Morelli believes that Sodoma now passed into Lombardy, and there
renewed his connection with the school of Leonardo, perfecting
himself in the manner towards which he had always shown so strong
a predilection. But we are wanting in documents to prove his actual
presence in Milan, and the works which have been attributed to him
within late years are not so well-authenticated as to be clear proofs
of his presence there.
One of these works which bears a strong resemblance to his style, is a
fresco on the wall of one of the rooms of the Villa Melzi at Vaprio,
about which the opinion of critics is still largely divided. This is a
gigantic group, more than life-size, and terribly out of proportion.
The Virgin is only portrayed down to the waist, the face is oval, with
the long nose, thin, half-smiling lips, and almond eyes of the school,
the hair waved crisply over brow and neck. The head is turned to the
right, and the eyes downcast. The Infant Christ is apparently seated on
the Virgin’s left arm, the little face is curiously exaggerated, almost
a caricature, with features puffed and grotesque, and the Virgin’s
right hand is over-large and shapeless.
To which of the Lombard masters this should be assigned is a matter
difficult to decide. Rio[35] and Mündler, as well as Amoretti, thought
it a genuine Leonardo, done in return for Melzi’s hospitality, but this
is obviously impossible, for Leonardo is never known to have worked in
“buon fresco.” Milanesi believed it to be more probably by Francesco
Melzi himself, the friend and pupil of Leonardo, and in this opinion
he is followed by some recent German critics. Morelli, however,
attributed it unhesitatingly to Sodoma, “executed probably between
1518 and 1521, during his stay in Lombardy.” (_The Borghese and Doria
Pamphili Galleries_, p. 157.)
To this unknown period are assigned a number of small panels and
canvases which are scattered about over North Italy in private
collections. These severally bear a marked affinity to the Lombard
school, but in the round freedom of their drawing and a certain
largeness, almost carelessness of design, they all differ from the
work attributed to the other Milanese masters. They are evidently the
production of a man trained in the Lombard School, but who had been
subjected to southern influences, and was haunted by a memory of the
Tuscan manner.
Signor Frizzoni has a penitent Magdalen, in neutral tints, with
slightly parted lips and flowing hair. A white chemise and a white vase
of ointment in her hand form the only contrast to the flesh-tints. This
little picture is very interesting, for it may be regarded either as an
experiment on Sodoma’s part in the fuller treatment of light and shade,
or else as being indicative of his habitual manner of painting easel
pictures. If the latter, it would show him to be completely Leonardo’s
pupil, whose large “Adoration of the Magi” which hangs in the Uffizi is
most probably a prepared ground, a study in values which was to have
been painted over in oil.
Most of the panels of the Lombard school have a certain brilliancy in
the light flesh-tints and an almost exaggerated modelling, which might
lead to the supposition that they were underpainted, and Sodoma’s
own panels have this luminosity in their shadows to a marked degree.
Another monochrome is in the possession of the heirs of the late Signor
Ginoulhiac of Milan. In this the Virgin has delicately drawn features,
the eyes rather longer and narrower and the eyelids less deep than
is usual with him, Sodoma generally giving a pronounced fulness of
eyeball to his youthful figures. Her light muslin sleeves gathered
at the wrist, and the dark drapery over head and shoulders fastened
by a modern brooch suggest the idea that it may have been painted
as a portrait and the halo which converted it into a Madonna added
afterwards. The Child’s deep-set eyes and low cranium also look as if
it had been a study from life.
In 1525 Sodoma was back again in Siena, painting for the city guilds,
which continued to give him work in spite of the condition of grave
political disturbance.
Cardinal Raffaello Petrucci died in 1522; he was succeeded by
Francesco, who soon gave place to Fabio, the youngest of Pandolfo’s
sons. Fabio was driven out by the populace; and, in 1525, the city,
torn by rival factions, not strong enough to govern herself, nor
willing, after the Petrucci tyranny, to elect one man as her leader,
placed herself under the protection of the new Emperor Charles V. She
created, for the management of local affairs, a magistracy of “ten
guardians of the liberty of the State,” uniting the different Monti,
or guilds under one, which consisted of that of the reigning nobles.
The city, now freed from the irksome rule, which nevertheless had
maintained order and kept the smaller factions from fighting, now gave
herself over to a renewal of ancient rivalries, not even quelled when
the Emperor came in person ten years later.
Notwithstanding, or perhaps in consequence of this political unrest,
the Siennese experienced a revival of religious fervour, and, keen in
their old belief that the town was under the special protection of the
Virgin, began to adorn the city gates and the walls of public buildings
with her image. To these years belong some of Sodoma’s finest works,
the chapel of St. Catherine in San Domenico, the colossal figures of
St. Ansano and St. Victor in the Palazzo Pubblico, and the beautiful
St. Sebastian of the Florence Gallery.
It was in 1525, when once more back in Siena, that Sodoma painted
the second of his masterpieces, the “Standard with the Martyrdom
of Saint Sebastian.” It was done for a confraternity--that of St.
Sebastian in Camollia--during the priorate of Matteo Fraschini, and
was carried through the city at the head of a procession during times
of pestilence. The contract was completed on the 3rd May 1525, and he
was to receive twenty ducats for it, but the painter was apparently
not satisfied with this agreement, and the matter was submitted to a
certain barber, Antonio di Pasquino, who was evidently regarded as
a keen judge of the fine arts, for he accounted the finished work
to be worth more than the twenty ducats stated in the contract. The
_Signoria_, therefore, quite willing to abide by the barber’s decision,
paid him another six, and the Chapter, deliberating on the work, which
they deemed carefully and diligently done, determined to give him yet
another four ducats.
To this Sodoma subscribed: “Io mise Giovane Antonio sopradeto so
’contento a quanto di sopra si contiene, e per fede ò scritto de mano
propria.”[36] (“I, the above-named Giovanni Antonio, am content with
what is contained above, and in testimony have written with my own
hand.”)
[Illustration:
_Brogi photo_ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
HEAD OF ST. SEBASTIAN]
The subject was one with which he was in entire sympathy, and he gave
time and enthusiasm to the drawing of the noble figure, with its
severe, classical lines, and its uplifted, spiritual face.
Edward Schurè wrote of it: “Le beau corps de l’adolescent, lié contre
un arbre est percé de flêches, couvert de gouttes de sang et tout
frémissant de douleur. Mais sur son visage et dans son regard tourné
vers le ciel, se joue, à travers la souffrance, un ravissement céleste.
L’état d’âme qui se reflête sur ce visage est semblable à celui qui
produisent les chœurs de Palestrina.”[37] (“The beautiful form of the
young man, bound to a tree, is pierced with arrows, covered with drops
of blood, and quivering with pain. But on his face and in his upturned
glance there plays, through all the suffering, a heavenly rapture. The
state of mind reflected on his face is akin to that produced by the
choruses of Palestrina.”)
J. A. Symonds’ appreciation is more profound. “Sodoma’s ‘St.
Sebastian,’” he wrote, in his “Renaissance in Italy,” vol. iii.,
“notwithstanding its wan and faded colouring, is still the very best
that has been painted. Suffering, refined and spiritual, without a
contortion or a spasm, could not be presented in a form of more
surpassing loveliness. This is a truly demonic picture in the
fascination it exercises and the memory it leaves upon the mind. Part
of its remarkable charm may be due to the bold thought of combining the
beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian sentiment of martyrdom. Only
the Renaissance could have produced a hybrid so successful, because
so deeply felt.” The “St. Sebastian” portion is in low tones, a cold
landscape almost in monochrome, the one warm element being the brown
shadows in the tree trunk. The angel has an indigo robe, and brings
with him a haze of lemon-yellow light as he descends from heaven with
the martyr’s crown. The flesh-tints of the saint himself are also cold,
the whole picture owes very little of its effect to colour, and its
beauty lies in the sculpturesque treatment of form, and the immense
feeling of atmosphere.
On the back of this picture is painted another--the Madonna seated upon
a cloud, while below her are St. Roch, St. Sigismund of Hungary, and
six white-robed brothers of the Order, all kneeling with uplifted eyes.
The greater beauty and fame of the “St. Sebastian,” and the fact that
the picture has to be turned round in order to see this Madonna, has
prevented it receiving the attention it deserves, being, as it is, one
of the most excellent examples of Sodoma’s special technique. That it
lacks the deeper feeling which many of his other pictures possess does
not lessen its value as a particularly characteristic specimen of his
brush-work.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
THE MADONNA IN GLORY, WITH SAINTS]
It is not easy to understand how this _gonfalone_ or banner could
possibly be the immediate successor of the Vaprio Madonna. Vasari
says that certain merchants of Lucca offered three hundred golden
scudi for it, but the confraternity could not bear the thought of so
beautiful a painting leaving the city, and refused the offer.
In 1525 Sodoma was employed by the company of Santa Croce to paint
three scenes from the Passion in fresco.
Of these three frescoes, the “Calvary,” “Gethsemane,” and “Hades,” the
two latter were, in 1841, sawn away from the walls and transported
to the Siena gallery, and the “Christ bearing the Cross on the
way to Calvary” conveyed to the little chapel of the monastery of
Sant’ Eugenio, about three miles outside Porta San Marco, now Villa
Griccioli. It has been terribly restored, especially the faces of
Christ and St. Veronica. The figure is clothed in red and crowned
with thorns. Simon, bearing the base of the Cross looks mournfully
backward. On the right, kneels St. Veronica, lifting her handkerchief
towards the Saviour, and behind her is a female figure in purple, with
clasped hands, probably the Madonna. A crowd of soldiers, on foot and
horse, fills up the background. Of the two frescoes now lodged in the
gallery at Siena, one represents the Garden of Gethsemane with Our Lord
kneeling alone upon a high mound, clad in a spreading mauve drapery,
while below Him are huddled together the sleeping forms of the three
disciples.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Accademia, Siena_
CHRIST IN LIMBO]
In far better preservation, and of far more original worth, is the
companion fresco, giving Our Lord’s descent into Hades. The semi-nude
figure of Eve has all his usual grace and carefulness, and is a
characteristic example of his modelling of legs and feet. The fleshy
knee, with its high lights and rather thick muscles around the ankle,
are to found again in the Berlin “Charity,” and in the various drawings
for the Borghese “Leda.” Eve’s face has a wistfulness which is very
tender and human as she watches the triumphant Victor over death and
corruption lift up to life her young son Abel.
That Sodoma was not above lending his pencil to art of a purely
decorative nature is proved by the existence of sundry little panels
which formed the head and tail-pieces of the open biers in which the
Siennese are still wont to carry their dead. These are generally oval
at the top, the shape of a tombstone, and are painted in oils back and
front with figures of the Madonna and of the dead Christ. There are
several series of these panels in the various churches of Siena, which
are attributed to Sodoma, and belong, we believe, to this middle period
of his residence there.
One of them, begun in 1525, was painted for the company of the Trinita,
and now hangs in the little church of San Donato, sawn into four
panels. It is attributed by different critics to Beccafumi and to Marco
da Siena, and even if it be by Sodoma, as some maintain, is not one of
his best.
A really beautiful set, however, was completed in the following
year for the company of San Giovanni della Morte, a branch of the
brothers of the Misericordia. On the 27th of May 1527, Sodoma was paid
ninety-eight lire for this bier, and Vasari gives it his unqualified
praise in the words, “I think this is the most beautiful (bier), that
one could possibly find.” The four panels are to be found in the
church of San Giovanni della Morte. Another set are on the walls of
the Siena Gallery, the two most successful of these are the Virgin and
Child holding a bird in its hand, with two figures in the background
crowned with vine and shamrock, and that of the half-length form of the
Dead Christ supported by female figures. The third represents another
Virgin and Child with angels, and the fourth has two green-robed
brothers of the Misericordia kneeling in adoration before the jewelled
Cross.
Dr. Richter has in his possession a small panel of this size and form,
representing a dead Christ supported by angels which most probably also
formed part of burial fittings. Dr. Richter dates it about 1530, and
the dark shadows and rather heavy modelling of the angels are quite
compatible with this late date. The Christ is not one of the artist’s
happiest conceptions; he apparently reserved his full attention for
larger and more important works.
Very like it in treatment especially, is the face of Our Lord in the
Pietà in the Borghese Gallery, which has many of the mannerisms of the
later Lombard school. It was formerly roughly attributed to the school
of Leonardo, but Frizzoni was the first to recognize in it the forms of
face, draperies, and landscape peculiar to Sodoma. Morelli agreed with
him in this opinion, and the picture is now catalogued as Sodoma’s.
[Illustration:
_Brogi photo_ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
STUDY FOR PIETÀ
(In the Casa Bambagini, Siena)]
Yet that he could, when he chose, portray with dignity and feeling
the helplessness of death is proved by two exquisite drawings in the
Uffizi. The smaller and more beautiful of these is a sketch, in silver
point, of the Christ dead in His Mother’s arms. It is evidently a study
for the Pietà which he painted on the walls of the Casa Bambagini,
Siena. The fresco itself, is not in a good state of preservation,
high up, and covered with glass. The lower portion has peeled very
considerably, and the four or five heads of angels and saints just
discernible, around the Virgin are almost defaced. The Virgin herself
has a mantle of very faded blue and an expression of intense sadness,
the face of Our Lord is singularly majestic and dignified, but perhaps
there is more sentiment in the little sketch which we reproduce.
The other drawing is evidently a study for the picture of the
Trinity which he painted for the Rosary Chapel of San Domenico, a
pencil-drawing washed with sepia and Chinese white. In it the Eternal
Father bears the dead Christ upon His knee, the Dove hovers above them,
and St. Catherine of Siena and several other saints are grouped around.
Siena is rich in local saints of the type dear to the Tuscan
populace--the man or woman of humble, holy life, sprung from their
midst and related to the citizens, and in whom the miraculous element
is subordinate to the human qualities of piety and charitable work. It
was the Beato Bernardo Tolomei, the rich young noble who forsook his
fast companions and founded the parent monastery of the Olivetan order;
or San Bernardino, the Franciscan preacher, awakening a religious
revival through Tuscany, and Umbria; or it was Catherine Benincasa,
the tanner’s daughter, who laboured among the poor and plague-stricken
of her quarter, and by her writing and exhortation was indirectly
instrumental in bringing back the Papal Court from Avignon to Rome.
This character was still a familiar memory to the people of Siena
when Sodoma lived and painted, and far more real and dear to them than
the almost mythical saints Ansano and Victor of the early centuries.
The church of San Domenico had consecrated more than one chapel to her
memory. The first contained a contemporary portrait of the saint by her
friend and _protégé_, Andrea Vanni; the second was now destined to be
decorated with scenes from her life by the hand of Sodoma.
[Illustration:
_Lombardi photo_ _Church of San Domenico, Siena_
THE VISION OF ST. CATHERINE]
He received the commission in 1526, and the earliest and by far the
best work which he did there is the fresco of “The Vision of St.
Catherine,” a painting of such tender sentiment and delicate quality,
as to enjoy a European fame. St. Catherine, perceiving the figure of
the Saviour in the air, and receiving at the same time the marks of the
stigmata in her own person, falls back fainting into the arms of two
of her nuns. The three figures are wholly in white, the cloth tunic
and scapulary of their order, a soft and mellowed white, deepening
to bluish grey in the shadows, and thrown into relief by the dull
browns and yellows of the landscape background. The figure of Christ,
supported by boy-cherubs, which hovers above, was perhaps necessary
to balance the composition, but it is by far the least attractive
portion of the picture; the interest centres wholly in the human group,
the tender faces of the women, the grace of flowing robes and deftly
modelled arms.
Baldassare Peruzzi, Sodoma’s friend and associate, perhaps expressed
the spirit of his contemporaries in his praise of this lovely
fresco, and he has laid stress upon the accurate rendering of the
physical signs of a psychological state, a point to which an eminent
physiologist of our own day, Prof. Angelo Mosso of Turin, has often
called attention.[38] Vasari possessed for many years a little pen and
ink drawing of this fresco, bearing a _cartellino_, high on the gilded
column, with the date 1526. This drawing, now in the Uffizi collection,
is too complete and faithful a copy of the fresco to be a study, and
must have been done by Sodoma or one of his pupils after its completion.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Church of San Domenico, Siena_
THE COMMUNION OF ST. CATHERINE]
The companion scene, on the right side of the altar, which portrays
St. Catherine receiving the communion from the hands of an angel, has
all Sodoma’s unrest of composition without his deeper sentiment. Both
the figures of the three kneeling nuns and the Madonna and attendant
angels which, with the Eternal Father, fill the upper part of the
picture, are in Sodoma’s commonplace manner, graceful, it is true,
but not sufficiently individual to merit the attention given to the
other. Siena contains much of his work of this quality, work that is
essentially and pre-eminently decorative, and perhaps does not aim at
the reproduction of strong individual sentiment.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Church of San Domenico, Siena_
THE PRAYER OF ST. CATHERINE]
The left wall is covered with a scene from St. Catherine’s missionary
work--the decapitation of the penitent thief, converted by the prayer
of the saint while on his way to execution. The figure of the Captain
of the Guard, dressed like a Roman centurion, has great vigour in the
drawing, and among the crowd of women and soldiers are several heads of
power and interest, but the composition as a whole is too crowded and
densely packed, and has Sodoma’s usual defect of confusion and lack of
symmetry.
Vasari says that he made no studies for this particular fresco, but
painted it straight away, without previous preparation, on to the damp
plaster. This may account very greatly for its unsuccessful grouping
and general sense of oppressiveness.
Over one of the doors in the sacristy is a large framed banner, bearing
the Madonna in pale blue robes, surrounded by a group of little
flying angels who scatter roses into her open tomb. The background is
greenish with a distant view of Siena, a yellow glory envelops the
angel children, several of whom are beautifully drawn and modelled. The
Virgin’s face, however, has suffered from damp.
In the chapel of the Rosary, next to the High Altar, is a much
blackened altar-piece, the study for which we have already mentioned,
as being among the drawings in the Uffizi. The dead Christ lies on the
knees of the Father, who holds a globe in His left hand. On either side
stand two saints, SS. Dominic and Sigismund to the left, St. Catherine
of Siena and a fine nude figure of St. Sebastian to the right. The town
of San Gemignano is faintly visible below. In 1527 Sodoma was chosen to
design the cartoons for a portion of the pavement of the cathedral,[39]
but it is uncertain whether these designs were ever executed.
One of the next documents concerning him is an action which he brought
against his scholar, Magagni, called Giomo del Sodoma, for a theft of
the most flagrant and vulgar kind. The master was at Florence, whether
on business or pleasure we do not know, and, falling ill, was nursed at
the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova. That the popular painter, a welcome
guest at many palaces, and known to most of the monastic communities,
should be so entirely without friends in the city of the Medici as to
be sent to a public ward of the great hospital is a matter of some
surprise. But we have abundant evidence that Sodoma was not liked in
Florence, and this may largely account for Vasari’s biassed prejudice.
While thus ill, and probably not expected to recover, his enterprising
pupil became possessed of the master’s keys, and, entering his studio,
carried away a number of bronzes and fragments of marble, partly to
Giomo’s own house, partly to that of Niccolò, his brother-in-law, a
sword-maker.
The theft consisted also of boxes of silver coins, medals, portions of
statues, marble feet, heads more or less imperfect, a bronze horse,
a bronze statuette of Apollo, several terra-cottas and a number of
artist’s utensils stored in a hen-house.
Besides these, there was a box containing a printed book, a manuscript
book on necromancy (the eccentric painter perhaps dabbled a little also
in the occult arts) and also _uno libro scripto a mano che tracta di
pictura_.
Whether this were a copy of Leonardo’s famous treatise or an
independent essay of Sodoma’s own we cannot tell. There was likewise
a picture, “less than a yard high, with a Madonna and Child in act of
espousing St. Catherine.” (Unfinished, and not to be traced.)
Needless to say that Sodoma won his case and Magagni was forced to
bring back his stolen goods. Milanesi believes him to have been ill
at Florence in 1527, but Frizzoni observes that the action was only
instituted in July 1529 and speaks of the theft as having taken place
during the “present month” while Sodoma was ill.
CHAPTER VI
LATER YEARS
Sodoma had worked hitherto for private patrons, or at best for
ecclesiastical communities. Of municipal commissions he had received
none as yet, and it was only in 1529 that the city gave him his first
large public order in the painting of the walls of their council
chambers.
The great Gothic Palazzo della Signoria which rises at the lower end of
the sloping square had already lent its walls to decoration by older
and stiffer hands. The pre-Raphaelites of Siena, Lippo Memmi, Ambrogio
Lorenzetti and others, had left there certain symbolical frescoes of
quaint, grave beauty, rich in phantasy and sentiment, if meagre in line.
Sodoma was the first of the moderns called to work there.
Whether the Board of Guardians directing the scheme intended to cover
the entire walls of the Sala del Mappamondo with decorative frescoes
has not been ascertained. At any rate, Sodoma was instructed to paint
two huge figures, standing within ornamental niches, which should form
pendants to one another, and a third, treated in a similar manner, on
the wall at right angles to them. The commission was given him in 1529,
and during the same year he completed the two first, the colossal St.
Victor over the door which leads to the Sala della Pace, and the St.
Ansano baptising neophytes in the niche near the window.
[Illustration:
_Lombardi photo_ _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_
SAINT VICTOR]
In September, when these were completed, two fellow-painters were
called in to estimate their value--Domenico Beccafumi, who had been
Sodoma’s companion in the work at San Bernardino, and a certain
Bartolommeo di David, of whom all that we know, is that a few years
later he was associated with Riccio in the painting of a chapel in
the Collegiata d’ Asciano. These men appraised the works as meriting
twenty-seven scudi of good gold,[40] with which sum Sodoma expressed
himself perfectly satisfied.
He had taken pains over the work. In these two Saints it was
principally youthful strength and grace which he was required to
represent; the moral and physical force of the Roman soldier, the
sweetness of the young martyred missionary.
He certainly portrayed strength in the commanding figure of St. Victor,
majestically grand in his brilliant toga of red, with blue cloak, and
cuirass of green and gold, but it is the strength of young, vigorous
manhood in repose. The power of movement is suggested under the heavy
armour, but there is no attempt at representing action, and for this
very reason Sodoma attained a greater success than if he had aimed at
dramatic display.
A pencil sketch in the Uffizi (No. 1939) reproduces this figure in
detail. It is not, however, recognised by Morelli, and bears every
probability of being a copy by a pupil. In the accompanying fresco of
St. Ansano baptising neophytes, with its wistful, feminine type of
beauty, he has found the exact antithesis of St. Victor. It is open
to discussion whether these two groups do not, in their composition,
outstep the limits of purely decorative art. The kneeling Christian,
whose foot lies over the edge of the painted parapet, and the seated
_putto_ who bears St. Victor’s helmet, are as far removed from
the reserve and restriction of the quattro-cento as Correggio’s
foreshortened flights of angels. The introduction of absolute realism
and the attempt to produce the illusion of tactile values was now
growing common, even in mural decoration, where a finer sense of
_boundaries_ and a flatter treatment of form would have led undoubtedly
to more artistic results. Raphael, whom we may perhaps consider as
the greatest of decorative painters, was, in his earlier work, guided
by a far more refined and truthful perception of the exigencies and
“unities” of this form of art than in his latest period, when the
sculpturesque manner of regarding painting had become common. For this
reason the “School of Athens,” and still more so the “Disputa,” fulfil
their decorative purpose more fully than the “Parnassus,” in spite of
its individual forms of beauty. Sodoma, in his work of this period,
could not escape the influence of the time, and we find him repeating
the same defect in his San Bernardo Tolomei on the right hand wall, and
in the Spanish chapel of San Spirito, which he was next employed to
fresco.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_
SAN ANSANO]
The town was now under the protection of Charles V. and occupied by
a French and Spanish garrison. The latter was sufficiently numerous
to own the little chapel referred to, and its decoration by Sodoma
was brought about in the following manner. Armenini relates the
quaint story in the first book of his _Veri precetti della pittura_
(chap. i.): The Cavalier Sodoma, he informs us, being one day rudely
accosted by a soldier of the guard, was unable to obtain from him the
apology which he demanded, or to discover the offender’s name from his
companions. Sodoma was determined to obtain redress, and, after gazing
fixedly at the man for some moments, he turned on his heel, went home,
and there carefully drew a sketch of his features. The following day
he presented himself before the Spanish governor, told his tale and
demanded the satisfaction that his dignity required. The governor was
quite willing to punish the insolent soldier, but wished to know how to
identify him. Sodoma then drew the portrait from under his cloak, and
exposing it to the view of all present, exclaimed: “Sire, this is his
face. I cannot describe him to you otherwise.”
The man was instantly recognised, and received his merited punishment,
and the painter, brought thus before the notice of the officers, not
only became exceedingly popular among the Spanish colony, but very
shortly after was commissioned to decorate their chapel.
There is in the Uffizi a first sketch in red chalk for this fresco.
Frizzoni mentions it as Sodoma’s, but Morelli does not include it in
his list of the artist’s drawings. In the sketch St. James is on foot,
a wand or staff in his hands, while, in the fresco, he rides furiously
on horseback, lashing with his sword at the recumbent figures of four
Turks, who, seen from below, are considerably foreshortened and again
lap over the parapet which forms the boundary line of this fresco.
This large semicircular fresco is the upper portion or lunette of the
chapel. The smaller lunette immediately under it forms part and parcel
of the altar, and represents the Madonna investing St. Idelfonzo with
the white chasuble of heavenly tissue with which she awarded his zeal
in writing a treatise upon her perpetual virginity. St. Lucy, in a robe
of greenish blue falling into short clinging folds, is perhaps the most
graceful figure of the group. St. Rosalie, crowned with flowers, kneels
behind St. Idelfonzo, and two adoring angels fill up the spaces behind
the Madonna’s head.
The minor saints which flank the altar-piece (not by Sodoma) have
gone, unfortunately, black, from the smoke of the candles which an
unappreciative clergy permits to flare before them. Nearest the altar
are St. Niccolò Tolentino and the Archangel Michael in the act of
chaining the fiend. Outside the arch which confines the frescoes,
properly belonging to the altar, are two saints, Sebastian and Anthony,
and in the species of spandrel formed by the space between it and the
walls of the chapel, two pairs of angels bear, amid floating ribbons,
the arms of Spain, and St. James of Compostella.
On the 20th of January 1530,[41] Sodoma had finished the two figures of
St. Sebastian and St. Anthony of Padua, and was paid four florins for
the former and six for the latter painting, and by the 16th of April
he had also completed the lower lunette with its kneeling groups of
figures.
The Spaniards were distinctly pleased with their chapel, and the
Emperor, Charles V., coming to Siena, and seeing this fresco, is
reported to have exclaimed that, in order to possess it, he would have
given all his cavalry. It was probably the execution of this work which
obtained for the painter the imperial title of Count Palatine.
The Count Giovanni Antonio Bazzi was next occupied on a small fresco
on the outside wall of a house belonging to the guild of shoemakers,
or Arte dei Calzolai.[42] On the wall at the corner of the Piazza
Tolomei, he painted Madonna and her Divine Child, with the saints,
John, Francis, Roch, and Crispin, the lawyer and patron of cobblers,
with a shoe in his hand. Vasari praises the execution of this work,
but the smoke and fumes of a laboratory which long existed immediately
underneath it, have more than obliterated the outlines of the work.
In the year after he might have been found mounted upon a mighty
scaffolding outside one of the city gates, that called Porta San Viene.
It had originally been named Porta Pispini, but after the death of
San Ansano, and the triumphal carrying of his body into the city, it
is said to have been altered to a corruption of _Il Santo Viene_ (The
saint comes). It was originally called Porta Santa Eugenie, _now_ Porta
Pispini.
The _Balia_ had been deliberating ever since 1526 about the painting in
fresco of this gateway, and finally decided to give the commission to
Sodoma, who had comported himself so well in the work he had left in
the town hall.
Seated aloft, some sixty feet or more from the ground, with large,
broad touches of his brush, he drew a colossal “Nativity,” all the
figures considerably larger than life-size.
A classic temple fills the middle distance; through the arches to the
left is seen a group of ruins; to the right a landscape with another
small peristyle temple. Immediately in front of this building kneels
the Madonna, with clasped hands. Her outline is just decipherable, but
all the colour has faded from her robe, and the Christ Child, who must
have lain at her feet, has vanished entirely. Above are ranged groups
of angels, singing from open scrolls of music, or with eyes uplifted to
the soffit of the arch, where, within a glory, flies the figure of a
child, symbolising The Word become Flesh.
On either side of this soffit are three groups of angels, who gaze
and point downward to the scene of the Nativity on the wall. These
groups of singing angels, now, like the lower part, faded into mere dim
shadows, show, upon close examination from the scaffolding put up for
restoration, very great beauty of outline and expression. The fresco
bears the inscription: DEIPARAE VIRGINI pro victoria, libertate et
salute hujus urbis, populus senensis ejus nomini devotus--A.D. M.D.XXXI.
As one of the bystanders he drew his own portrait, now elderly, and
with a beard. In his hand was a brush, pointing to a small _cartellino_
on which he had traced, Vasari says, the word _Feci_ (I made it).
Milanesi, or rather the commentators of Sansoni’s edition of Vasari,
assert that this motto was _Fac tu_ (Do thou likewise), and was a kind
of bombastic challenge to his critics.
It is possible that the honours which were now being showered upon
him, and the ease with which he surpassed his fellow-painters in Siena
may have turned the artist’s head. He had the disadvantage of standing
alone, without that strenuous rivalry which the presence of other
masters of equal merit would have necessitated. He went very rarely to
Florence, where he was not liked, and he could paint so easily and so
well when he chose, that it seemed hardly worth his while to make those
laborious studies and drawings which should serve as a preparation for
all thoughtful work. He now returned to San Bernardino to finish the
series begun in 1518, and painted the last of the four large frescoes,
that of the Virgin’s Coronation. From San Bernardino he went back to
the Palazzo Pubblico to complete the third figure begun there five
years before.
Upon the entrance wall of the Sala del Mappamondo, in the corner
at right angles to his St. Victor, he had sketched a figure of San
Bernardo Tolomei, standing, in white robes, book and crozier in hand,
beneath a heavily ornamented portico, above which a group of _putti_
are dancing. But with his characteristic inability to work for long
together at any one subject, he had left this fresco half finished for
more than four years, and the _Signoria_ waxed impatient with him.
In a document preserved in the Archivio delle Riformagioni di Siena,
is to be found this entry: “Finally, for our having been instrumental
in causing the painter Sodoma to finish the painting of the Blessed
Bernardo in the Sala del Mappamondo, he having already had eight
scudi for it, which our predecessors have left a note of: and he,
Sodoma, having now to be paid the remainder for the work which he
has meanwhile completed, may it so please your Magnificent Lordships
so to ordain that the said Sodoma be paid for the laudable work, by
Messer Francesco Tholomei, most worthy artisan of the cathedral church,
according to what he has largely promised to us and to the said Sodoma.”
The adjective “laudable” is certainly not here out of place, for,
evidently unwilling to put beside his colossal saints work of an
inferior quality, he concentrated his attention sufficiently to produce
a figure full of individuality and delicate sentiment, perhaps more
successful in its expression than either of the other two.
Throughout 1535 he was still working in the Palazzo Pubblico, at the
fine “Resurrection” which he now painted in one of the lower halls, the
apartment used for the weighing and taxing of the salt.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_
THE RESURRECTION]
There are the three coats-of-arms, all of the city of Siena, which were
separated from this picture when it was moved, and are now to be found
high up in an arch in a room not usually shown, where the registers
are kept. In 1842 the fresco was sawn away from the wall where it was
originally traced, and transported to a room on the first floor, now
the office of the Mayor. The fresco is a large one, and the figures
all life-size. The lid of the stone sarcophagus has been raised, and
the rising figure of the Redeemer steps into the cold air of dawn. The
face is not particularly attractive, but the whole figure is strong
in its triumphant sense of new-born life and victory over the grave.
This feeling of alertness and swiftness is further accentuated by
the drowsy attitudes of the three sleeping soldiers, one of whom half
awakes to see the vision pass. The fresco is cold in colour, blues and
stoney greys predominating, a faint light lies over the eastern sky,
but the scene is illuminated by the yellow rays which stream from the
Saviour’s own person. Its strength lies less in its colour than in its
draughtsmanship, and the suggestion of energy without violence.
In the Morelli Collection at Bergamo there is a fine drawing in red
chalk of this figure of the risen Lord.[43] It is evidently a study for
this fresco or for the panel of the same subject at Naples, possibly
the original study for both.
I have not been able to trace the history of the Naples pictures,
for whom it was painted, or how it got to Naples. At the beginning
of the last century it formed an altar-piece in the church of San
Tommaso there, and has since been removed to the Pinacoteca and hung
high up in a bad light. The composition is much the same as that of
the Siena fresco, but there is a difference of pose in the figures of
the two little angels who lean over the sarcophagus. The picture has
suffered from neglect, but was evidently never equal in beauty to the
Siena version. The soldiers are carelessly painted, completely out of
drawing, and the figure of Our Lord lacks the dignity which the artist
infused into the other. There is a cartellino with the inscription, IO
ANT. EQUES. VE (sic) AUCT. F.A. 1535.
In 1536 we find him engaged in another long and wearisome lawsuit,
this time with the brothers John and Arduino Arduini, rich Siennese
merchants who, several years before, had got him to paint an
altar-piece for a chapel belonging to them. This is the large
“Adoration of the Magi” which now hangs in the Piccolomini chapel of
St. Agostino. Apparently the brothers Arduini went back from the price
originally agreed upon. Sodoma employed one of the most brilliant
jurists of the age, Vannoccio Biringucci, to plead in his cause, but
the action was, notwithstanding, decided against the painter, and the
Arduini were absolved from further payment. But they were instructed
to restore to Sodoma, on receipt from him of seven scudi, a circular
panel with the Virgin, St. Elizabeth, and St. Joseph. This _tondo_
has unfortunately vanished, and must have been one of his earlier
productions.
To these years belong a really lovely panel in tempera washed over with
glaces of oil, by some regarded as his last work of merit. Its date is
uncertain; the warm, rich colouring, similar to that of his earlier
years, and the careful modelling of the Virgin’s face has induced
some critics to place it as early in his career as 1516-18. But Dr.
Frizzoni, who is perhaps the authority most profoundly acquainted with
Sodoma’s style, considers the looseness of its drawing and its want of
luminosity in the shadows as indicative of late work. The picture was
made for the altar of St. Calixtus in the cathedral, the last chapel
on the right hand side, and was framed with a carved stone moulding of
Renaissance design. In one of the restorations or re-adjustments
which were carried out in 1681 and 1704, it was taken away from the
cathedral and put up in the little chapel in the Palazzo Pubblico,
beside the frescoes of Bartolo di Fredi, and the carved choir-stalls.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_
THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ST. LEONARD AND ST. JOSEPH]
Mancini says that Annibale Carracci could not tear himself away from
this painting, but remained riveted before it, entranced by its
poetic beauty and the charm of its landscape, which with the ruined
amphitheatre recalls the fact that Sodoma had been in Rome.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Palazzo Pubblico, Siena_
THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN]
In 1537 the _Signoria_ gave him another small commission, a fresco
above the door in the Sala dei Matrimoni. It was composed of a Madonna
and Child, infant St. John, and Saints Ansano and Galgano, but is out
of drawing, and the whole execution superficial. To this period of his
life most probably we should date the fresco of the “Ascension” in the
Collegiata of the Castello of Trequanda, and the altar-piece in the
Collegiata of Asina-Lunga, which has a Madonna enthroned, two saints
on either side, Sebastian and Anthony, Louis and Roch, and a little
kneeling St. John in the centre, as well as the “Madonna and Child”
of the Borghese Gallery, with the smiling Infant stretching out its
hand for the rose which St. Joseph offers it over the Virgin’s right
shoulder. This has a delightful landscape background, full of incident,
and the hands are painted with care.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Villa Borghese, Rome_
THE HOLY FAMILY]
It would seem as if the tide of fortune had now turned against him.
His work had already begun to deteriorate in quality, and from this
time forth becomes more uniformly weak and vapid, and his inability to
apply himself for long together at the same subject, a drawback in his
youth, in his old age became a veritable stumbling-block. He does not
seem to have made any provision for his declining years.
In 1531, in response to some schedule for Income-Tax, he had drawn up
a would-be comic list[44] of his possessions. The excessive bad taste
of its jokes--the taste of the fifteenth century--strikes painfully
on the modern ear. This list mentions an orchard, or rather farm, at
Fonte Nuova, “which I till, and which others reap,” a house in the
Vallerozzi quarter and eight horses. The remaining items are apes,
crows, peacocks, owls, and “three evil beasts, which are three women.”
In 1534 he bought another house, but by 1537 both house and orchard
seem to have passed out of his hands. His daughter was married, and,
after the last coarse allusion, there is no further reference to his
wife. His brothers and sisters were probably dead or lost to view, and
Sodoma himself was sixty years of age.
One of his last works in Siena was the much damaged panel in the church
of the Carmine, representing the “Birth of the Virgin.” The grouping of
the figures and the drawing, especially of the woman in the foreground,
who holds the child, reminds one forcibly of Raphael. There are seven
persons in the picture, St. Anne in her bed, two women who bring her
food, and three who are attending the little new-born child. Joachim
peeps in upon the scene from behind the heavy curtain. In this painting
the light issues from three different points; from the fire in front,
which one does not see, but which casts its red glow upon the three
foreground figures; from the window behind St. Anne, and from the
night-lamp under the bed. It looks as if the artist had been trying an
experiment in some of those new effects of complex chiaro-oscuro, which
were evoking such admiration at Rome.
In the early spring of 1537 the _Signoria_, consisting of the Chamber
of Nobles and the Captain of the People, gave him his last commission,
the painting of the little open chapel or loggia standing out from the
façade of the Palazzo Pubblico.
On the 6th of March he was formally appointed to execute the work, and
agreed to have it finished by the Feast of St. Mary, in August.[45]
He was to paint a Madonna in the centre, flanked by the four patron
saints of the city, with the Eternal Father in the lunette above. He
was to provide his own materials--ultramarine included--and to be paid
for it the sum of sixty scudi, fifteen on commencing the work, fifteen
when half-way through, another fifteen when finished, and the final
fifteen only to be granted him if the fresco was completed by the
given date--a provision which shows us that the noble _Signoria_ was
already acquainted with his habits. On the 14th of March he was paid
the first fifteen scudi, but there are no more entries of payment,
and in the following year we find among the Archives published by
Milanesi, a correspondence between the rulers of Siena, Sodoma himself,
and the Prince of Piombino, with whom he was staying.[46] We have
already alluded to the painter’s introduction to this prince, and the
friendship which had sprung up between them.
It was now in his moment of declining strength, when he found his power
lessened and a group of younger men occupying that place in popular
favour which had once been his, that the friend of years came forward
and offered him a commission and the hospitality of his roof.
But the _Signoria_ grew more and more impatient at the delay, and,
tired of addressing peremptory letters to Sodoma himself which received
no or evasive replies, attacked the Prince himself.
“Most excellent and magnificent Lords,” he answered them, “there is no
doubt that the Cavalier Sogdona’s (sic) great wish to please me, and my
own satisfaction in watching him perfect the panel so long promised me,
has been the cause of the offence given to your excellent Lordships,
not only by the Cavalier, but also by me, as accomplice in the fault.
Whereas I, thinking it over and recognising myself to have been guilty,
principally because this delay of his has been to suit my convenience,
humbly confess that the obligation and the debt towards you have been
mine. And still more so since the Cavalier on his part defends the
error through his profession as an artist, who (as indeed often happens
to poets) is so driven and constrained by his inspiration, that, even
wishing to leave the work he has undertaken he is not able to do so.
And I, enchanted and led away by his skill, have taken a liberty with
your most excellent Lordships, in not urging him to go as soon as was
needed. But I am convinced that he presents himself to your service
with so much the greater fervour, that any delay will be more than
compensated by the value and excellence of his work. For this and for
your goodwill towards me your Excellencies will be pleased to receive
him graciously, (now that the cause of your indignation is removed)
and he deserves it, seeing his power. So that I recommended him to you
with all my heart, as a deserving man and personally dear to me. And as
always a good son and servant I present and recommend myself to you.
THE PRINCE OF PIOMBINO.
From Piombino the 13th _August_, 1537.”
So the old man came back to the city of his adoption, where he had
lived nearly forty years, and finished the fresco in the chapel of
her nobles. Then, as Vasari says, he betook himself to Volterra, and
painted for Messer Lorenzo di Galeotto dei Medici, a canvas with
Phaeton falling headlong from the chariot of the sun.
The picture itself has long since vanished. It was last heard of in a
list of pictures quoted by Della Valle in the seventeenth century, left
by a Siennese citizen to his son (_Lettere Senesi_, iii. 267).[47]
A pen and ink drawing for the myth of Phaeton is to be found in the
Uffizi collection, attributed to and even signed by Baldassare Peruzzi.
Recent criticism, however, has discovered this signature to be a
modern forgery, and the drawing is now believed to be by Sodoma. It is
not very likely, however, to bear any reference to this canvas referred
to by Vasari, as it is obviously a study for a ceiling decoration,
but is interesting as showing his treatment of this classical myth.
M. Destailleur, an architect at Paris, has in his possession another
drawing by Sodoma of this same subject. I have not had an opportunity
of examining it, but Frizzoni declares it to be similar in taste and
technique.
It may have been during this sojourn, that he repainted, for the
Franciscan monks of Volterra, the Child in Signorelli’s fine panel
of the “Circumcision,” now in our National Gallery. That this
interpolation of one artist’s work over that of another, is a
satisfactory method, one cannot maintain. The styles of the two masters
were so utterly different, and their aims in art so alien, that one can
but regret a vandalism of this kind which does justice to neither.
Several other small paintings in the Volterra churches have been
attributed to Sodoma, but apparently without good reason, and critics
of authority have rejected them as mere feeble copies, or the work of
scholars. Certainly, in many of the little Tuscan towns round about
Siena, exist oil paintings and fragments of frescoes which resemble, in
one or two characteristics, the work of this prolific master.
A pupil studying under him, or some unknown admirer of his style, might
easily become an imitator of his special mannerisms, and succeed in
approaching very closely to the level of his feebler work, as in the
case of Riccio, with his exceedingly beautiful little fresco which lies
upon the left wall of the collegiate church of Asciano.
Sodoma grew weary of staying at Volterra. He had been long accustomed
to a roving life, and to work or not as the fancy moved him. Perhaps,
kept as a dependant in the Volterra Castle, he too grew, like Dante, to
know:
“Come sa di sale,
Lo pane altrui, e com’ è duro calle
Lo scendere e il salir per l’ altrui scale.”[48]
So he wandered away to Pisa, where he had never been, and where he had
a friend in Messer Battista del Cervelliere, director of the Cathedral
Board of Works. This gentleman introduced him to Messer Bastiano della
Seta, chief architect of the cathedral, who was planning a series of
scenes from Scripture history, to be painted in the spaces above the
choir-stalls in the round apse. The paintings are in three tiers,
divided by marble mouldings and gilt and carved pilasters. Bastiano
della Seta gave him two really good commissions, a Pietà, immediately
behind the High Altar, and a well-composed group at the side, on the
lowest tier, representing the Sacrifice of Isaac.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Cathedral, Pisa_
THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC]
“But,” says Vasari, waxing sententious over the supposed failure of
these works, “Since these pictures did not succeed very well, the said
master-workman, who had intended to order from him several panels for
the church, dismissed him, well knowing that men who do not study, lose
in their old age those qualities which they had naturally in youth,
and are left with a style and technique often but little to be praised.
“At the same time Giovanni Antonio completed a panel in oil which he
had begun for Sta. Maria della Spina, making the Madonna with her
Son in her arms, and kneeling before her St. Mary Magdalen and St.
Catharine, and St. John, St. Sebastian, and St. Joseph standing at the
sides, in all of which figures he succeeded much better than in those
in the cathedral.”[49]
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Museo Civico, Pisa_
THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS]
The two former are still in their place in the cathedral choir. The
enthroned Madonna, with the six saints has been taken away from Sta.
Maria della Spina, and hung in one of the side rooms of the Pisan
Gallery. Vasari continues: “After this, having nothing more to do at
Pisa, he went to Lucca; where, in St. Ponziano, a spot belonging to the
brothers of Monte Oliveto, an abbot, who was a friend of his, made him
paint a Madonna on the stairs going up to the dormitory.
“When he had finished this, weary, poor, and old, he went back to
Siena, where he did not live long, since, being ill, and having nobody
to take care of him, and nothing to live upon, he went to the great
hospital, and there, in the course of a few weeks, he ended his life.”
Signor Ettore Romagnuoli discovered among the archives a letter which
conclusively proves the date of the painter’s death to have been on the
14th of February 1549.
This letter was written by one, Ser Alessandro Buoninsegni, to his
brother, Bernardino, Ambassador at Naples, on the fifteenth of
February, and states, “The Cavalier Sodoma died last night.”[50]
But the writer does not mention _where_ he died, and we have only
Vasari’s authority for the lonely end in the hospital, such as any
pauper might have known.
CHAPTER VII
GENERAL CHARACTER
In addition to the long list of frescoes and paintings which we
have already considered and about which we have been able to obtain
contemporary information, there still remains to be noted a small
number of minor works, of but little relative value as examples of his
art, but bearing some historical importance.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Monte Oliveto, near Siena_
HEAD OF SODOMA
(From the Life of St. Benedict)]
Chief among these are the various portraits of himself. The only
thoroughly authenticated one is that of Monte Oliveto, painted, as
we have seen, when five-and-twenty years of age, at the epoch of
his first important commission. It is a young, rugged face, with
blunt, plebeian features, full, however, of intelligence and some
wistful thoughtfulness lying behind the eyes, in spite of the evident
self-consciousness induced by the new clothes. There is a small panel
portrait in the Uffizi, said to be his by some critics. The technique
is heavier than was usual with him in middle life, but it is not
altogether unlike the Monte Oliveto fresco, allowing for the face to
have matured. The hair is long, in curls around the neck, and the short
beard untrimmed. A dress of black, mingled with crimson velvet, the
fine white shirt just showing at the throat, and a dark velvet cap, are
set against a background of dark, sombre sky. It is a face grown thin,
without refinement, a mouth still full and sensual in spite of the deep
hollows under the eyes, as of one who had suffered from neuralgic
pain; but the eyes have the same look that they had in youth; there
is the old contradiction in the face, even as in the work, the dual
elements eternally at war.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST]
The bearded head of the old man in the Pitti (No 382), also said to be
a portrait of himself, is not recognised by critics of authority, nor
does it bear much resemblance to the other two.
Local tradition has further associated his name with the peering head
wedged in between the two tree trunks in his famous “Adoration of the
Magi,” made for the brothers John and Arduino Arduini. Unlike their
fellow-townsmen, these gentlemen were none too generous in their
remuneration to the painters, and Bazzi, never having laid by a penny
in his life, and possibly being in debt into the bargain, began the
famous lawsuit against the Arduini.
This picture, so singularly fitted for the consideration of students,
for it illustrates all his more noticeable characteristics, is still in
the Piccolomini chapel of the church of Sant’ Agostino at Siena. The
head above referred to is that of one of the shepherds, a subordinate
personage rendered suddenly striking by some peculiar realism in its
treatment.
It is neither a beautiful face nor a good face which looks from between
the tree trunks away from the Madonna and towards the gaily harnessed
horses led by negro slaves. But it is undoubtedly a portrait, and
there are many who accept it as Sodoma’s own, in spite of its sharper
features. But the Italian countenance, often full and puffy in early
youth, is apt to assume in later life a sharpness of outline almost
unrecognisable. Della Valle speaks of two portraits of himself, one
of them signed Giovanni Antonio da Vercelli, where he also declares
the honour of his Siennese citizenship, and Vasari mentions that in
the perished fresco at San Francesco, of which there only remains the
fragment now in the Siena Gallery, Sodoma had drawn his own likeness,
clean-shaven and with flowing hair.
Above the gate of San Viene we have another version of himself in
his old age, bearing a brush in his hand, which points towards a
_cartellino_ with the words “Fac tu.” These various portraits,
alternately with and without beard, but show that the painter was a
close observer of current fashion, as befitted a Chevalier of the
Pope’s creation and a Knight-at-arms, and they also enable us to follow
his changeful physiognomy throughout a variety of phases.
There is a good deal of his work in England, chiefly in private
collections. Our National Gallery is unfortunate in having but two very
small and very poor specimens of the master’s work. They are not in any
way representative. The “Madonna under the red canopy with the kneeling
monk presented by St. Peter” is probably one of his late “pot-boilers.”
It was originally in the Rosini collection at Pisa, and may have been
painted there during the last years of the artist’s life, while he was
working at the choir decorations in the cathedral.
The head of Christ, crowned with thorns, was probably part of a much
larger picture, and has been remounted. It is evidently the central
figure of a procession to Calvary, for the head is bent under the
weight of a large cross, the eyes are downcast, and the hands uplifted
as if in prayer. Nevertheless, it is quite shallow in sentiment, and
has none of that peculiar pathos and intensity with which his sincerer
work is imbued.
There is, however, another fragment by Sodoma in the National
Gallery,--the Child in Signorelli’s large altar-piece of the
Circumcision. It appears that the Franciscan brothers, for whom this
panel was painted, objected to Signorelli’s treatment of the infant
Christ, and, on the plea of it having been spoiled by the damp (!),
caused it to be repainted by Sodoma, who also touched up the Virgin’s
face. Vasari gives the historical basis for this theory,[51] and upon a
closer examination of the picture itself we may see that the attitude
of the Child’s legs has been altered, the old outline showing through
the Madonna’s robe, and the whole modelling is obviously by another
hand.
It is to be regretted that our public galleries possess no worthier
specimen of Sodoma’s work.
A very beautiful and highly-finished drawing is to be found, however,
in the British Museum; in the same case as the four authentic
Leonardos. It is in black chalk touched with white in the high lights,
and represents the head of a youth, evidently a portrait. The nimbus,
and the letters I.O. which have converted it into a saint are thought
to be a later addition. The trustees of the Museum regard it as the
portrait of Timoteo Viti by Raphael--probably because it was at one
time in a private collection at Urbino, but Morelli has pointed out to
us the fact that it is probably by Sodoma, and a careful examination
of it, and the chalk drawing in the Uffizi of the young man crowned
with laurel, will, I think, show the same characteristics of line and
shading.
Signor Morelli had himself two fine panels of Sodoma’s, which he left,
together with the rest of his collection, to the public gallery at
Bergamo. One of these is a “Madonna and Child” in the orthodox Lombard
manner, so entirely Leonardesque in treatment that it was formerly
counted among that master’s work. The other, a male head in oils, has
traces of a certain Flemish tendency, a peculiar manner of laying on
the colour which we may observe in the Frankfort portrait and in his
early _tondi_ at Siena. Besides these there are two drawings in red
chalk, one for the figure of Christ in the “Resurrection,” the other of
“St. Christopher crossing the stream.”
Signor Enrico Costa of Florence has a late work, a small panel
depicting the half-length figure of the dead Christ upheld by the
Virgin and Magdalen, a subject which Sodoma never approached in his
early period, but which we find frequent after 1525.
In the sacristy of San Tommaso, Milan, there is a somewhat similar
panel; and we have already described that belonging to Dr. Richter.
The public gallery of Genoa has possessed for some years a “Holy
Family” classified among Sodoma’s late work. It formed part of a small
collection left to the city by Prince Oddone di Savoia, brother of the
late King; and Lady Layard has at Venice, among the collection of her
late husband, a small panel of the “Virgin and Child surrounded by a
glory of angels.”
[Illustration:
_Brogi photo_ _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_
CHALK DRAWING OF A HEAD]
In the vaulted offices under the great Hospital at Siena, now
belonging to the Societa di Eseguzione di Pia Disposizione, is to be
found a “Madonna and Child with St. John,” painted on panel, a charming
little picture of his late middle period, but which has been spoiled by
the little St. John having been retouched and the flesh tints varnished
until they are far too yellow. The Virgin holds the infant Christ, who
playfully toys with St. John’s cross. St. Joseph in a yellow robe is
seen behind the Virgin’s right shoulder, and to her left is an airy
landscape, such as Sodoma loved to paint, with winding river, distant
town upon the water’s edge with all its minutiæ--turret, buttress, and
bridge.
Perhaps one of his most genial characteristics is this great delight
in landscape, which was but another and probably less developed form
of his love for nature shown in the fondness for animals. The tendency
to look more and more at the external world was a growing one in his
day, and painters of such opposite schools as Perugino, Leonardo, and
Titian united in their poetic appreciation of natural scenery and their
recognition of its harmony with man.
In Sodoma the natural beauty seems sometimes to outweigh the human
interest, especially in much of his later work, where the figures are
carelessly done. His stretches of country are nearly always painted
with tenderness and care, as if in age he had grown weary of his
intercourse with men and turned to the mute life of hill and lake and
wind-swept plain for refreshment.
There is, finally, a small number of pictures by him quoted by early
writers, which have either altogether disappeared, or else exist in
remote corners under other names.
There are two early panels mentioned by Della Valle done for the Savini
family, for which Antonio Barili carved the frames; the “Virgin and
Child with St. Joseph holding a vase,” and a “Virgin and Child with St.
Joseph, St. John Baptist, and St. Catherine of Siena.”
Then there was the small panel for the organ of San Francesco, of the
“Virgin nursing her Child,” recently found by Mrs. Richter, and Della
Valle also tells of a _cassone_, or marriage chest, decorated for one
of the brides of the Saracini household, with scenes relative to the
Judgment of Paris.
The picture representing Phaeton falling from the chariot of the Sun
has already been mentioned (see p. 85).
Vasari, speaking of Sodoma’s friendship with James V. of Piombino,
distinctly says that he painted sundry pictures for him, and in the
correspondence between that Prince and the _Signoria_ of Siena, we
remember that James gives as an excuse for Sodoma’s delay in returning
that he was so absorbed in the picture he was painting for him that he
could not tear himself away from it. But we are not told the subject.
Baron Rumohr[52] speaks of having found at Siena certain fragments by
Sodoma treating the metamorphoses of Cephalus, but I have not been
able to trace them; and in the records of that lawsuit between the
painter and the brothers Arduini we remember that part of Biringucci’s
verdict was that the Arduini should restore to Sodoma a round panel
representing the “Virgin and Child, with St. Joseph and St. Elizabeth.”
It is, on the whole, not easy to justly estimate the artistic position
of a man so productive as Sodoma, and so extraordinarily unequal in
his productions, without falling either into the error of viewing him
too completely in the light of his inferior work, and so underrating
his masterpieces, or that of extending an unmerited value to all that
came from his hand. He has suffered from literary injustice in Vasari’s
biassed criticism, he has suffered from technical contempt through his
own defect of over-production, and consequent inequality. The mere fact
that his life was a long one, and his paintings far too numerous, has
crowded out, in popular estimation, the memory of those few works of
absolute genius on which his higher reputation rests.
And much that has been put down to Sodoma’s wayward individuality may,
in reality, be attributed to the general tendencies of his age and the
society in which he lived. It is undeniable that the really great man,
the hero, guides, rather than is guided by, his environment; but we
have not claimed for Sodoma a position among the greatest.
And one has to bear in mind, also, that what his contemporaries sought
in art was less the edification of the mind than the pleasure of the
eye. The sensuousness that had entirely taken possession of Italian
literature was spreading now into the more lately developed field of
painting, and the criticism of either art was directed rather towards
its beauty of form, pleasing line or ringing metre, than to the idea or
sentiment expressed. Painting especially, in seeking thus exclusively
for mere plastic beauty, was losing touch more and more with thought,
and, as it became less intellectual, beginning to lose also some of the
highest qualities of beauty.
The whole of Siennese art had been from the beginning less thoughtful,
less literary than the Florentine; it was the emotional expression of
simpler natures not trained in the subtleties of feeling which the
combined influence of the Florentine scholastics and Greek revivalists
had brought about. Siena awoke late to a knowledge of the classics, and
suffered much less than Florence and Venice from that form of religious
eclecticism which ended in artistic insincerity. But even Siena on
her hill-tops could not escape the general tide of thought which was
sweeping over Europe, and in the transition from the mediæval to the
modern standpoint, she, too, passed through her phase of uncertainty
and affectation.
Sodoma came at the beginning of this phase. What was best in him held
to the old tradition, the sincerity of the Middle Ages. The practical
side of him, the obvious need of bread, carried him along with the
tide; and the sincerity which is found in modern art, the poetry of
realism, was as yet undiscovered. Hence the anomalous character of his
painting, the indecision of his mental bias.
He left a great deal that was showy and trivial; he was often unequal
in the different parts of a picture itself, frequently throwing all
his skill into the working of a central figure and dashing in the
subordinate subjects hurriedly, as in St. Anna in Creta; or else
working but half-heartedly at the ostensible _motiv_, and concentrating
his energy upon the perfection of some lesser group, as in the
Descent into Hades. He had all the advantages and all the defects of
an over-rich artistic imagination, and a bias towards the subtle and
mystic which often degenerated into the production of what was merely
weak.
The sensuality with which not only Vasari but contemporary poems tax
him was probably an integral part of his character, the ardent, fiery,
impressionable artist-nature, as quick to throw itself into extremes of
degradation as to rise to sublimest heights of intuitive faith.
It is the same temperament which we find in St. Augustine, St. Francis,
and St. Bernardino, the vitality which, ill-directed, secures us the
libertine, and, chastened and inspired, supplies the saint.
Sodoma did not become a saint; he remained a sinner and a reprobate
to the end of his life, and died poor and neglected in the public
infirmary. What in others developed into a feverish and ardent piety,
in him remained forever merely potential. It sufficed, however, to give
a particular character to his art. His strength can never be said to
have lain in dramatic grouping or even in proportion of composition.
His abundant fancy led him often to overcrowd his canvas, and a violent
two-fold action going on at the same time induces a great feeling
of restlessness in most of his larger works. He was at his best in
the portrayal of single figures, overwhelmed by some profound or
subtle emotion; St. Catherine swooning in the excess of her religious
fervour, Eve bewildered as she first steps into the light of day, St.
Sebastian uplifted in the wonder of his martyrdom, or, most profound
of all, Our Lord in the hands of the scourgers. If he could not
invest his Madonnas with the great purity of Perugino or Botticelli’s
solemn thoughtfulness, he could at least paint men and women under
the influence of strong and exalted passion, the mysterious sweetness
of whose faces haunts one with persistent power. Unfortunately,
Sodoma, as Rio observes, was too often content to sacrifice quality to
quantity, and, amid all his work, there are only some five or six of
his paintings which can take their place among the great works of the
century.
But it is through the merits of these that his claim to greatness lies,
and one has grown to associate with his name a sense of the dignity of
suffering and the majesty of human nature at its moments of martyrdom
and sacrifice.
Wherever humanity has escaped from its daily round to reach a supreme
crisis of noble emotion, the artist became, as it were, inspired by his
subject and rose to the occasion in art that was both spiritual and
strong.
CATALOGUE OF THE WORKS OF
SODOMA
ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THE GALLERIES
IN WHICH THEY ARE
CONTAINED
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
BUDA PESTH, ESTERHAZY COLLECTION.
Pen drawing of ROXANA as a nude standing figure.
Attributed by von Pulsky to Raphael. _Hungarian National
Gallery_, p. 41-47.
VIENNA, ALBERTINA.
CHRIST CROWNED BY THORNS. Charcoal drawing.
Attributed to Leonardo.
PORTRAIT OF A MAN. Charcoal drawing.
Attributed to Raphael.
Red chalk drawing of figures for MARRIAGE OF ALEXANDER.
“Ce dessin que Rubens avait acheté à Rome, passa depuis dans
la possession du Cardinal Bentivoglio, qui en fait présent au
graveur en médailles Mélan, Crozat l’eut ensuite au sortir
de la collection Vanrose, et le Duc Albert de Saxe-Teschen
l’acquit d’un amateur. Il porte aussi l’estampille du prince
Charles de Ligne.”--Passavant, ii. 441. Quoted by Morelli.
VIENNA, BELVEDERE.
HOLY FAMILY. Panel.
Virgin and Child with infant St. John and St. Joseph.
“The space too much filled up by the heads, disposed in
pairs in a not very happy manner. The drawing is inaccurate,
but the modelling obtained with vigorous light and shade.”
Frizzoni, _Arte Italiana del Rinascimento_, p. 181.
BRITISH ISLES.
LONDON, NATIONAL GALLERY.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS. Panel, 1 ft. 7 in. × 1 ft. 2 in.
No. 1144.
The Virgin is seated on a throne under a canopy, the curtains
of which are drawn back by two angels. The infant Christ upon
her knee blesses a kneeling monk, who is presented by St.
Peter.
_Purchased at Florence in 1883 from Mr. C. Fairfax Murray._
_Formerly in the Rosini Collection at Pisa._
HEAD OF OUR LORD. Canvas. 1 ft. 3 in. × 11 in. No. 1337.
A life-sized head and shoulders in white drapery. The head
bent and eyes downcast, crowned with thorns.
Probably part of a once larger picture.
_Purchased in 1891 from Herr Eduard Habich of Cassel._
BRITISH MUSEUM (PRINT ROOM).
YOUNG MAN IN BLACK CAP. Charcoal drawing. Nimbus and letters I.
O. have probably been added later.
Attributed to Raphael.
_From Antaldi Collection, Urbino._
OXFORD, CHRIST CHURCH LIBRARY.
Pen drawing for ROXANA’S COUCH.
WINDSOR.
(_a_) A sheet containing four pen drawings for the HEAD OF
LEDA, back and front. Hair closely plaited into spirals.
Attributed to Leonardo. All shadows reversed.
(_b_) Pen drawing of LEDA, standing, with one _putto_ beside
her.
Attributed to Raphael.
SIR FRANCIS COOK, DOUGHTY HOUSE, RICHMOND.
ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. Panel. 4 ft. 8 in. × 3 ft. 3 in.
The saint is mounted on horseback and transfixes the dragon
with his long lance. The Princess, in crimson robes, stands
in the left foreground with hands clasped in terror. A
characteristic landscape, with a castle on a hill, winding
river, bridge, rocky hills and delicately foliaged trees,
places it in date between 1520-25.
_From the Earl of Shrewsbury’s Collection._
_Originally at Siena._
WALTER SICHEL, ESQ., 50 EGERTON GARDENS, S.W.
HOLY FAMILY. Panel. 2 ft. 2 in. × 1 ft. 6 in.
Seated Virgin holding the infant Christ on left knee, and
behind Him is seen the little St. John. In left background an
aged saint (perhaps St. Jerome).
A genuine but damaged early work.
_Formerly belonged to the Rev. A. E. Clementi-Smith._
DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE, CHATSWORTH.
Pen drawing for Borghese LEDA, kneeling, with her arms around
swan.
Attributed to Leonardo.
CAPTAIN HOLFORD, DORCHESTER HOUSE, PARK LANE, LONDON.
HOLY FAMILY. Circular panel. 42 in. in diameter.
The Virgin kneels in adoration before the infant Christ.
Behind her St. Joseph leans upon his staff. The little St.
John and two kneeling angels are beside the Christ Child.
Landscape background.
COLONEL H. CORNWALL LEGH, HIGH LEGH HALL, KNUTSFORD.
HOLY FAMILY AND ST. JOHN. Circular panel. 3 ft. 7 in.
The Virgin is seated on the ground, the infant Christ
reclining at her feet, asleep. On the left St. Elizabeth,
nursing the little St. John, on the right, behind the Virgin,
St. Joseph. Landscape background with castle.
Early work, but the same period as the Scarpa and Dorchester
House pictures.
DR. RICHTER, 14 HALL ROAD, ST. JOHN’S WOOD, LONDON.
DEAD CHRIST. Panel. 1 ft. 7 in. × 1 ft. 1 in.
Half-length figure of Christ supported by two angels.
On the back is written: 115. _Opera del Sodoma. Al.
Reverentissime Piccolomini. A. G. E. D. i. p. poito_--(sic).
_Bought from Genovesi, Venice, in Sept. 1891._
_Formerly in possession of Pope Gregory XVI., or Clement
XIII._
VIRGIN AND CHILD.
Earliest work at Siena. (See page 10.)
_From San Francesco._
EARL OF WEMYSS, GOSFORD HOUSE, SCOTLAND.
HOLY FAMILY AND ST. JOHN. _Tondo_, 2 ft. 9 in. diameter.
The Virgin is seated and St. Joseph standing, looking over on
to the two children, who are nude and on the ground.
FRANCE.
PARIS, LOUVRE.
DRAWINGS.--No. 87, 88, 94.
CHAMBERY, MARQUIS COSTA DE BEAUREGARD.
CHRIST BEARING CROSS, UPHELD BY TWO FIERCE EXECUTIONERS. Panel.
Three heads, probably one of the Virgin, still visible; the
picture has been chopped about, and two entire figures are
gone. In the right hand corner is the following inscription
in five lines:
Io. Au. Cavalier De Vercei 1500 C. V. Destructa Fuisset
Maserius Reparavit 1541.
This is however, most probably by the hand of a restorer who
made a mistake in its date, for Sodoma was not made Cavalier
till 1505.
GERMANY.
BERLIN, GALLERY.
CHARITY. Panel. 0.87 × 0.49 = 2.10 × 1.7.
A tall female figure in drapery, and loose hair, standing in
an open field, with a nude child in her arms and two others
clinging about her skirts. Landscape background.
FRANKFORT, STAEDEL INSTITUTE.
FEMALE PORTRAIT. Panel.
Young woman in satin dress, richly braided, with puff sleeves
and hanging laces, elaborate jewellery. Gloves in right hand,
left arm rests on table and holds a sort of mace. Through an
open window is seen a mountain landscape, with river.
Attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo. 1504?
HANOVER, GALLERY.
LUCREZIA.
_From the Kestner Collection._
HAMBURG, HERR COUNCILLOR WEBER.
LUCREZIA.
MUNICH, GALLERY.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ST. JOSEPH. Panel. 0.70 × 0.48 = 2.4 ×
1.8. [No. 1073.]
A replica of the “Holy Family” in Turin, but, says Frizzoni,
superior in freshness of execution.
(PRINT ROOM.)
Drawing, washed with water colour, of Diana, surrounded by
her companions and chasing into the forest a satyr and his
companions.
Attributed to Maturino.
Drawing, washed with colours, but much restored, representing
Assumption of the Magdalen.
WEIMAR, PALACE.
Pen drawing for LEDA, kneeling; swan on her left, children to
right.
Attributed to Leonardo. (Braun 148).
ITALY.
ASINA-LUNGA, COLLEGIATA.
MADONNA ENTHRONED. Panel.
Madonna with infant Christ upon her knee, to whom the little
kneeling St. John presents his cross. Standing to the right
Saints Sebastian and Anthony, to the left Saints Louis and
Roch.
About 1537-40.
BERGAMO, BIBLIOTECA LOCHIS.
MADONNA AND CHILD. Panel. 0.32 × 0.42 = 1.3 × 1.4. [No. 136.]
Dark in tone and modelling.
Attributed formerly to Leonardo.
MALE HEAD.
In the manner of Franz Hals.
_Formerly in the Morelli Collection._
BERGAMO, MORELLI COLLECTION.
ST. CHRISTOPHER WITHIN A NICHE. Red chalk drawing.
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. Red chalk drawing.
FLORENCE, UFFIZI.
ST. SEBASTIAN. Oil on canvas. 2.04 × 1.45 = 6.10 × 4.11. [No.
1279.]
The saint bound to a tree pierced with arrows, and looking
upwards to an angel who brings him a jewelled crown.
MADONNA IN GLORY WITH SAINTS.
This picture is painted on the back of the “St. Sebastian.”
The Madonna is seated upon a cloud, while below her are St.
Roch, St. Sigismund of Hungary, and six white-robed brothers
of the Order, kneeling, with uplifted eyes.
PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER. Panel. 77 × 60 = 2.6 × 2.0. [No. 282.]
Head and shoulders of a man in the prime of life. Black
and crimson dress, black velvet cap, long hair. Landscape
background.
Frizzoni doubts the identity of this portrait.
DRAWINGS. In upper room:--
421. Madonna and Child with cat in His arms. Attributed
to Leonardo.
563. Silver point. Madonna seated, with dead Christ on
her knee. Study for “Madonna del Corvo” in Via
Stalloreggi, Siena.
565. Pen and ink. Three female figures, first sketch for
“The Vision of St. Catherine.”
566. Pen and ink and water colours. Young man in fur
cloak crowned with laurel.
1479. Pen and ink. Nude figure of Roxana with _putti_.
1506. Pen and ink. Two nude figures, with _putti_ and
various heads.
1507. Pen and ink on grey paper. Two nude figures
upholding a female form. Study for “The Vision
of St. Catherine.”
1644. Pen and ink. Ceiling study for the myth of Phaeton.
1936. Red chalk. St. Christopher, with bare legs, staff in
hand and Child on shoulder. Upper portion treated
separately. Study for the picture in the Spada
Gallery, Rome.
1937. Red chalk. St. James robed as a pilgrim.
1938. Red chalk on yellowish paper. “Rape of the Sabines.”
1939. Red chalk. St. Victor with raised sword.
1943. Pen and ink on greenish paper. Design for the
decoration of one of the chapels of the SS.
Annunziata.
In engraving department:--
1932. Pencil on tinted paper. Figure of man, apparently
St. Jerome.
1935. Red Chalk. Two sleeping soldiers, evidently study
for “Resurrection” at Siena.
1944. Pen drawing, washed with colour and Chinese
white. Christ going to Calvary.
1945. Pen and Chinese white on yellow paper. Pietà.
Dead Christ on the knees of Eternal Father;
Holy Spirit above, two saints and various women.
1942. Pen and ink on yellowish paper. “St. Catherine’s
Vision.”
Finished drawing with date 1526 on pillar. Doubtfully
ascribed to Sodoma.
FLORENCE, REFECTORY, MONTE OLIVETO.
THE LAST SUPPER. Fresco.
Our Lord seated at table with four of the disciples. St. John
asleep upon his bosom, St. Peter to right, Judas on nearer
side of the table looking towards spectator and another
disciple near him. 1515.
FLORENCE, SIGNOR ENRICO COSTA’S COLLECTION.
PIETÀ. Panel.
Half figure of dead Christ upheld by Virgin and Magdalen.
Late.
FLORENCE, PITTI PALACE.
PORTRAIT OF A MAN IN RED CAP.
PIETÀ.
GENOA, GALLERY.
HOLY FAMILY. Panel.
_Left to the city by Prince Oddone di Savoia._
SAN GEMIGNANO, PRISON CHAPEL.
ST. IVES. Fresco, in Monochrome.
A scene in two compartments divided by a pillar. To the left
St. Ives at a canopied desk administering justice to a crowd
of petitioners. Two _putti_ holding the Macchiavelli shield.
In the compartment to the right five male figures waiting.
1507.
SAN GEMIGNANO, ON THE WALL OF LOGGIA OPPOSITE COLLEGIATA.
VIRGIN ENTHRONED. Fresco.
Madonna and Child, who turns His head towards Saint
Gemignano. On the other side, St. Nicholas of Bari. Above
are two flying angels, the best preserved part of the whole
fresco.
MILAN, BRERA.
MADONNA AND CHILD. 60 × 53 = 2.1 × 1.10.
The Virgin seated on a bank with infant Saviour, who turns to
caress a lamb. Landscape background with lake, mountains, and
river; vivid sunset colouring. Transparent shadows and warm
flesh-tints.
Early.
_Sold by auction at Cologne in 1890 to Herr Eduard Habich of
Cassel, and by him to the Brera Gallery._
MILAN, DR. FRIZZONI.
PENITENT MAGDALEN. Panel. 67 × 64 = 2.7 × 2.1.
A dark figure in white vest, holding vase of ointment.
In chiaro-oscuro. Very square in drawing.
Middle period.
Drawing.
MILAN, GINOULHIAC FAMILY.
MADONNA AND CHILD. Panel. 87 × 65 = 2.11 × 2.2.
The Virgin has muslin sleeves gathered at the wrists and dark
drapery over shoulders and head, fastened by brooch. Hands
long and tapering, eyes narrow.
In chiaro-oscuro.
Middle period.
MILAN, AMBROSIANA.
Drawing. MAGDALEN BEFORE OPEN BOOK.
MAGDALEN BEFORE CROSS.
Red chalk drawing. HEAD OF LEDA.
MILAN, SAN TOMMASO.
PIETÀ.
NAPLES, GALLERY.
RESURRECTION. Panel. 2.80 × 2.00 = 9.3 × 6.8.
A replica of the fresco at Siena. Three soldiers in act of
awaking, two _putti_ leaning and seated on sepulchre. An
angel flies above Christ.
In cartellino at foot, Io. Ant. eques. Ve. Auct. F. A. 1535.
PISA, CATHEDRAL.
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC. Canvas. 1.97 × 1.35 = 6.7 × 4.6.
Abraham in blue robe and flying crimson mantle brandishes his
knife over the head of Isaac. An angel seizes the knife and
points downward to the ram caught in a thicket.
1541-42.
PIETÀ. Canvas. 2.10 × 1.74 = 7.6 × 5.9.
Our Lord supported by St. John and the Magdalen. Group of
Maries to the left, three men to the right.
Very darkened.
1541-42.
PISA, MUSEO CIVICO.
VIRGIN AND SAINTS. Canvas. 2.88 × 1.67 = 9.7 × 5.7.
Madonna enthroned; to her right St. John Baptist and St.
Peter, to her left St. Sebastian and Magdalen and St.
Catharine of Alexandria.
1542.
_From church of Madonna della Spina._
ROME, CAMERA DELLA SEGNATURA, VATICAN.
DECORATION OF CEILING, EXCEPT THE PANELS. Fresco.
Within an octagon in the centre of ceiling twelve putti in
various attitudes of joy, support a round disc containing
the arms of the Della Rovere. Around them eight scenes in
grisaille.
1507.
ROME, VILLA BORGHESE.
PIETÀ. 0.69 × 0.58 = 2.4 × 1.11. [No. 462.]
Dead Christ supported by Virgin and Saints.
Once attributed to school of Leonardo.
Late.
LEDA. Panel. 1.12 × 0.86 = 3.9 × 2.10. [No. 434.]
Attributed to school of Leonardo.
Thought by Morelli to be a Sodoma till Richter suggested a
copy of an original work now lost.
HOLY FAMILY. Panel. 0.75 × 0.67 = 2.6 × 2.3. [No. 459.]
Madonna with rich head draperies holds divine Child, while
St. Joseph, behind her right shoulder, offers Him a rose.
“Execution good, but vigour and freshness of his early
Lombard days no longer apparent.”--Morelli.
ROME, BARBERINI GALLERY.
A MADONNA, much repainted, bears the name of Bazzi, but is
probably by a Bolognese.
ROME, VILLA FARNESINA.
MARRIAGE OF ALEXANDER. Fresco.
Open colonnade with landscape background, carved bed,
on which Roxana is seated, with attendants and _putti_.
Alexander in centre of composition, and behind him two genii.
1514.
THE FAMILY OF DARIUS BEFORE ALEXANDER. Fresco.
Alexander stands before a tent to receive the kneeling mother
of the Persian. His wife and family stand behind. Group of
soldiers in right middle distance. Landscape background.
1514.
“These frescoes are not exempt from an excess of plentitude,
but a freshness and rarity of effect which Raphael himself
could not obtain.”--Burckhardt, _Cicerone_.
ROME, DONNA LAURA MINGHETTI.
HOLY FAMILY. Round panel.
The Virgin, with flowing parted hair, bends over the two
children. Little St. John holds his cross, and two saints
watch from behind.
Early.
ROME, PALAZZO CHIGI.
THE PERSECUTION OF RHEA SILVIA? Panel.
A composition of small figures struggling around a woman, two
children clinging about her lead to the supposition that it
may represent the casting out of Rhea Silvia and Romulus and
Remus.
ROME, PALAZZO SPADA.
ST. CHRISTOPHER. Panel.
St. Christopher crossing the river with infant Christ upon
his shoulders.
A red chalk drawing for this exists in the Uffizi.
SIENA, GALLERY.
DEPOSITION. Tempera, on wood. 4.56 × 2.71 = 15.3 × 9.0. [X. 13.]
The body of Our Lord being lowered from the Cross by St.
Peter and Joseph of Arimathea. Beneath, a group of women
about the fainting Virgin, the centurion, and a soldier.
1502(?).
_From the Cinozzi chapel in San Francesco._
NATIVITY. Circular panel in tempera. 1.11 = 3.10. [X. 11.]
Before a shed of broken brickwork kneel the Virgin and St.
Joseph, with an angel holding the infant St. John, adoring
the Christ Child laid upon the hem of His mother’s robe.
Early.
_From the Monastery of Lecceto._
GETHSEMANE. Fresco. 2.36 × 1.17 = 7.11 × 3.11. [X. 2.]
Our Lord kneels in prayer upon a little mound, beside which
are the three disciples sleeping. An angel brings Him the cup.
1525.
_From the suppressed Compagnia di Sta. Croce._
DESCENT INTO HADES. Fresco. 2.36 × 1.60 = 7.11 × 5.4. [X. 46.]
A curved piece of fresco painting, removed from a niche.
The Risen Christ, holding a banner and robed in white, bends
towards Abel, whom He raises from the earth. Behind Him stand
Adam and Eve (the latter a very beautiful figure) and other
Old Testament characters.
1525.
_From the suppressed Compagnia di Sta. Croce._
CHRIST BOUND TO THE COLUMN. Fresco. 1.35 × 1.01 = 4.7 × 3.4.
[VIII. 27.]
The figure is semi-nude, crowned by thorns, and bound to
a porphyry column, which formed part of a colonnade. Two
fragments of gross red arms are all that remain of the crowd
of tormenting soldiers. A faint landscape of sea-shore with
the sun drawing water is visible.
This fresco is one of Sodoma’s masterpieces, and rivals the
St. Sebastian in expression.
Date uncertain, between 1510 and 1515.
_Brought in 1842 from the cloister of San Francesco._
JUDITH. Tempera, on wood. 0.84 × 0.47 = 2.9 × 1.6.
The figure of the girl, clad in orange and electric blue,
stands in a wintry landscape grasping the head of Holofernes
in her left hand and holding a dagger in her right.
Late.
ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA. Panel. 0.39 × 24 = 1.3 × 1.0. [VIII. 32]
The black and white robes of the nun are relieved by a
brilliant yellow glory behind her, in which angel faces are
faintly suggested. She reads from a book which is resting
upon a skull held in her left hand.
FOUR PANELS BELONGING TO A BIER. Tempera.
(_a_) Virgin and Child holding bird in left hand; two figures
in background crowned with vine and shamrock.
(_b_) Dead Christ supported by two female figures.
(_c_) Virgin holding playful Child; two angels adoring.
(_d_) Two green-robed brothers kneeling beside jewelled
cross; five angel heads in cloud above.
1527.
SIENA, ST. AGOSTINO.
ADORATION OF THE MAGI. Tempera, on wood. 3.34 × 2.02 = 11.0 ×
6.9.
Beside a ruined shed the Virgin holding her Child, before
whom kneels the aged king, Baldassare. Gaspar and Melchior
stand behind him, offering vases of ointment, and followed by
a crowd of servants and horses. St. Joseph stands behind the
Madonna.
Inscription: _Ascanius Piccolomineus Archiepiscopus Senarum
quintus_.
1518.
SIENA, SAN BERNARDINO.
THE PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN. Fresco. 2.78 × 2.88 = 9.3 × 9.7.
Under an open colonnade, at the top of a low flight of steps,
the high priest bends to receive the Child, who turns back
towards St. Anna. The foreground filled with two groups of
figures, women to the left, a group of men to the right,
headed by a stalwart youth in orange red.
1518.
THE SALUTATION. Fresco. 2.78 × 2.88 = 9.3 × 9.7.
Within the temple, before an alcove, St. Elizabeth bows
before the Virgin, who gently raises her. An elderly male
figure, probably Zacharias, poses the left hand upon St.
Elizabeth’s shoulder. To right and left groups of women and
children.
1518.
THE ASSUMPTION. Fresco. 2.78 × 2.88 = 9.3 × 9.7.
Around a golden glory a semicircle of angels support and
uplift the white-robed figure of the Virgin. Immediately
below her the open tomb, filled with flowers, and engraved
upon it, _Si cor non orat, invanum lingua laborat_. To right
and left are grouped the apostles; to right St. Thomas
receives the girdle which the Virgin lets fall.
1532.
THE CORONATION. Fresco. 2.78 × 2.88 = 9.3 × 9.7.
The Virgin kneels in the centre of the picture, while Our
Lord places the crown upon her brow. Behind Him are Adam,
Eve, and other Biblical characters. To the left hand, St.
John Baptist, etc. Above, two groups of angels play musical
instruments, and a circle of _putti_ play round the central
glory where hovers the dove.
1532.
ST. LOUIS OF TOULOUSE. Fresco. 2.78 × 1.26 = 9.3 × 4.3.
Within a painted niche the French bishop stands reading an
open book, crozier in hand and mitred. His robe is blue,
spotted with the _fleur-de-lys_.
ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA. Fresco. 2.78 × 1.26 = 9.3 × 4.3.
Under a similar niche is seen the Franciscan in his brown
robes, holding a book in his right hand and a flaming heart
in the left. In the clouds appears the half figure of the
Madonna and Child. A few leafless trees behind.
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. Fresco. 2.78 × 1.26 = 9.3 × 4.3.
Under a tufty tree the saint stands, clasping a book and
cross, and looking upward to a child angel.
(IN SACRISTY.)
STANDARD. Oil, on canvas. 1.58 × 1.02 = 5.3 × 3.4.
Madonna in red and blue robes. Six cherubs around her, one of
whom holds crown above her head.
Very much retouched.
SIENA, CHURCH OF THE CARMINE.
BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN. Panel. 1.51 × 1.46 = 5.1 × 4.10.
St. Anne in bed, to whom two women present dishes of food,
while three others dress and tend the child, and a man,
evidently Joachim, gazes from behind a curtain.
Very dark and much damaged.
Late.
SIENA, SAN DOMENICO.
THE VISION OF ST. CATHERINE. Fresco. 3.79 × 1.92 = 12.8 × 6.4.
Between two heavily carved and gilded columns the saint, in
her ecstasy, sinks back into the arms of two Dominican nuns
who support her. A distant background with river, ruins and
small circular temple. The figure of Christ, pierced with
the stigmata, which repeats itself upon the person of St.
Catherine, hovers above.
“The beauty of the faces, the expression of tender anxiety
and reverence of the nuns, the divine languor on the pallid
features of St. Catherine, render this fresco one of the
marvels of art.”--Mrs. Jameson.
1526.
THE COMMUNION OF ST. CATHERINE. Fresco. 3.79 × 1.92 = 12.8 ×
6.4.
St. Catherine, in her white and black robes, kneels between
two sisters. An angel brings her the Host with the form of
Christ upon it, and above are seen the Madonna and Child,
Eternal Father, and Holy Spirit.
1526.
THE PRAYER OF ST. CATHERINE. Fresco. 4.96 × 5.04 = 16.6 × 16.9.
A crowded scene, in the centre of which the executioner holds
aloft the dripping head of the thief, while three angels
above receive his penitent soul. St. Catherine kneels praying
in the left foreground, behind the centurion directing the
execution.
1526.
(IN SACRISTY.)
BANNER. Oil, on canvas. 1.90 × 1.37 = 6.3 × 4.6.
The Madonna, in blue robe, ascends from her open tomb
surrounded by flying angels, who scatter pink roses. A golden
glory surrounds her. Beneath is a view of Siena.
(CAPPELLA DEL ROSARIO.)
ALTAR-PIECE. Panel. 2.98 × 2.00 = 9.3 × 6.8.
On high, the Eternal Father, with globe in left hand. St.
Catherine, with dove, and St. Sebastian, bound, on right side
of picture; on the left, St. Dominic, with book in left hand
and right upraised. Above him, a young saint, with crown.
Town of San Gemignano below.
Colouring very dark and heavy.
The fifteen little scenes illustrating the mysteries of
the Rosary, which form the predella, are not recognised by
Frizzoni as Sodoma’s, but considered to be by a scholar.
The centre of this picture has been cut out for a Votive
Madonna.
SIENA, SAN GIOVANNI AND GENNARO.
FOUR PANELS BELONGING TO A BIER. Tempera, glazed. 0.56 × 0.45 =
20 × 18.
(_a_) Dead Christ supported by two angels.
(_b_) Madonna with Child on right arm.
(_c_) St. John Baptist.
(_d_) S. Bernardino of Siena.
1527.
SIENA, SALA DEL MAPPAMONDO, PALAZZO PUBBLICO.
ST. ANSANO. Fresco. 3.15 × 2.27 = 10.6 × 7.7.
Within an elaborately ornamental niche St. Ansano stands,
baptizing a nude figure of a neophyte. Two others kneel and
stand behind him, while a cherub pours water into a vase.
1529.
ST. VICTOR. Fresco. 3.15 × 2.68 = 10.6 × 8.10.
Within a similar niche stands the colossal saint in armour,
holding a naked sword above his head. A cherub clasps his
helmet, and another holds an olive branch and a blue shield,
bearing the word _Liberta_.
1529.
ST. BERNARDO TOLOMEI. Fresco. 3.15 × 2.41 = 10.6 × 8.0.
Under a painted portico stands the saint in white robes,
looking downwards; in his right hand a crozier, in his left a
red book. A group of _putti_ play above the architrave.
1534.
(CHAPEL.)
MADONNA AND ST. LEONARD. Panel. 1.91 × 1.67 = 6.5 × 5.6.
In the midst of an exceeding beautiful landscape, with ruins
of the Colosseum, is seated the Madonna, holding the divine
Child, who turns towards St. Leonard, trying to seize his
Cross. To the left St. Joseph reading.
Perhaps the finest specimen of Sodoma’s late work.
1537 (?).
_From the altar of St. Calixtus in the cathedral._
(SALA DEI MATRIMONI.)
MADONNA AND SAINTS. Fresco. 1.72 × 1.32 = 5.8 × 4.3.
The Virgin, in a blue cloak, caresses the infant Christ,
who looks down towards little St. John. Behind her are St.
Ansano, in red drapery, and St. Galgano, leaning upon his
sword.
1535.
(SALA DEL PRESIDENTE.)
RESURRECTION. Fresco. 2.45 × 1.93 = 8.3 × 6.4.
Our Lord arising from the sarcophagus, over which two angels
bend. Three soldiers asleep in the foreground. A varied
landscape of rock and tree and town.
1535.
(CAPPELLA DEI NOBILI.)
VIRGIN SURROUNDED BY SAINTS. Fresco. 3.87 × 2.50 = 12.10 × 8.4.
Madonna and Child, in red and blue robes, surrounded by
SS. Ansano, Victor, Augustine, and James, and a number of
_putti_. In the lunette of arch the Eternal Father surrounded
by angels, right hand raised in blessing and left grasping a
globe.
Inscription: _Ad honorem Virginus Mariæ Io Antonius Sodona
eques et Comes Palatinus faciebat_ MDXXXVIII.
SIENA, SPANISH CHAPEL, SAN SPIRITO.
A group of paintings consisting of:
Lunette--
ST. JAMES ON HORSEBACK. Fresco. 1.02 × 4.19 = 3.4 × 13.9.
The saint, mounted on a white charger, rides over the bodies
of five prostrate Turks, slashing at them with his sword.
At right hand side--
ST. ANTHONY THE ABBOT. Fresco. 1.85 × 0.44 = 6.3 × 1.5.
The aged saint, in black robe, leans on his staff, with his
pig at his feet.
On left hand--
ST. SEBASTIAN. Fresco. 2.12 × 0.57 = 7.0 × 1.10.
A nude figure bound to a broken marble column and pierced by
arrows.
Lunette above altar--
MADONNA INVESTING ST. ILDEFONZO. Canvas. 1.54 × 2.03 = 5.1 ×
6.10.
The Virgin stoops to throw a white chasuble over the Spanish
saint, who kneels before her with clasped hands. Two angels
stand behind her, and St. Lucy and St. Rosalie kneel at the
sides.
On right hand--
ST. MICHAEL SLAYING THE DRAGON. Canvas. 1.79 × 0.55 = 5.11 ×
1.10.
On left hand--
ST. NICCOLÒ TOLENTINO. Canvas. 1.75 × 0.55 = 5.11 × 1.10.
SIENA, HOSPITAL.
HOLY FAMILY. Panel. 0.78 × 0.46 = 2.7 × 1.6.
Madonna holding Child upon her knee, who turns towards St.
John Baptist and dallies with his cross. St. John stands
behind the Madonna’s right shoulder. Landscape background to
left.
SIENA, PORTA SAN VIENE.
NATIVITY. Fresco.
On soffit of arch a glory, with cherub in centre; three
angels on either side singing and pointing downwards to
centre of fresco, where, before a classic temple, kneels the
Madonna with clasped hands, adoring her Child. Groups of
angels on either side and above her.
Inscription: _Deiparæ Virgini pro victoria, libertate et
salute hujus urbis, populus senensis ejus nomini devotus._
A.D. MDXXXI.
“Very ruined, but fine.”--Burckhardt.
SIENA, CASA BAMBAGINI.
PIETÀ. Fresco.
Madonna, in faded blue, with dead Christ upon her knee;
angels’ heads around her.
A very fine drawing for this exists in the Uffizi.
SIENA, ARTE DEI CALZOLAI, PIAZZA TOLOMEI.
MADONNA AND SAINTS. Fresco.
The Virgin and Child, with Saints Francis, John, Roch, and
Crispin with a shoe in his hand.
Quite invisible through dirt and smoke.
1530.
SIENA, VILLA GRICCIOLI. (Formerly the Monastery of S. Eugenio.)
PROCESSION TO CALVARY. Fresco. 2.38 × 1.62 = 7.11 × 5.4.
Our Lord in red, with crown of thorns. Simon bearing the end
of the Cross. St. Veronica kneels to the right, lifting her
handkerchief. Behind her stands the Madonna. In background a
crowd of soldiers.
Faces of Christ and St. Veronica very much restored.
1525. This fresco also came from the Compagnia di Sta. Croce.
SIENA, ST. ANNA IN CRETA.
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. Fresco.
Our Lord blessing the five loaves which a child presents to
Him. Group of disciples behind Him. Landscape background with
Roman arch.
To right--
GROUP OF DISCIPLES. Fresco.
To left--
CROWD OF MEN AND WOMEN WITH EMPTY BASKETS. Fresco.
Above the entrance--
PIETÀ. Fresco.
To right--
ST. ANNE ENTHRONED. Fresco.
Beneath her, the Virgin and Child, flanked by two Olivetan
brothers.
Very much injured.
To left--
A BISHOP STANDING AMID SIX KNEELING OLIVETANS. Fresco.
In soffit of arch--
MEDALLION WITH BUST OF OUR LORD. Fresco.
SIENA, MONTE OLIVETO, MAGGIORE, CLOISTER.
A series of frescoes representing--
1. ST. BENEDICT LEAVING HOME.
St. Benedict, in blue robe and orange drapery, sets off upon
a white horse for the School of Rome, accompanied by his
nurse in pink, mounted upon an ass. His mother and father
stand to the left, and the town of Norcia lies perched upon a
hill in the right middle distance.
2. THE ROMAN SCHOOL.
The students, ranged on either hand under an open colonnade,
are instructed by a professor from a raised throne in the
centre. St. Benedict turns away in disgust to the right.
3. THE MIRACLE OF THE SIEVE.
To the left, within the house, the saint and his nurse are
praying over the broken sieve. Outside, a group of six men
and a child, among whom is the portrait of Sodoma himself
with a crow and two badgers. The mended sieve hangs on the
columns of a temple in the background.
4. ST. BENEDICT TAKING THE MONASTIC HABIT.
In the middle distance to the left the saint is seen
approaching in his blue and yellow robes. In the foreground
is the monk Romano who invests him with the white habit which
was the earliest dress of the Benedictines. To the right he
is seen in his new garb, meditating.
5. ST. DEODATO FEEDS ST. BENEDICT.
At the entrance to a cell, in a clump of rocks, St. Benedict
kneels in prayer. From above, the hermit lets down a basket
of bread with bell attached. The devil, in form of a snake,
glides up to break the cord. Landscape background.
6. ST. BENEDICT’S EASTER DINNER.
A window breaks into the middle of this fresco. In the right
section is seen the priest in red, cooking his Easter meal,
and in the foreground receiving the heavenly instruction to
carry it to the saint. To the left he has spread the meal
upon a rough stone table, and he and his servant wait upon
the saint.
7. ST. BENEDICT PREACHING TO THE SHEPHERDS.
Seven peasants are grouped around him; one, in red cloak
and cap, is seated. An old man in white undershirt carries
a basket of cherries. To the right, a youth, clad in skins,
leans listening upon his staff, a dog at his feet. Landscape
background.
8. ST. BENEDICT’S TEMPTATION.
To the left, the saint sits at the entrance of his cell, a
red Bible on his knee. To the right, he has thrown off his
garments and is rolling in the bed of thorns. A broad plain
with winding river behind.
9. THE HERMITS VISIT ST. BENEDICT.
Six brown hermits kneel, beseeching the saint to become their
leader. In middle distance, to the right, he is seen arriving
at the hermitage.
The heads are full of humour and expression, evidently
portraits.
10. THE ATTEMPT TO POISON THE SAINT.
Beneath an open colonnade St. Benedict, seated at table,
breaks the glass of poisoned wine which five of the
rebellious hermits offer him. To the right he is seen leaving
the hermitage for ever.
11. THE BUILDING OF SUBIACO.
To the right, St. Benedict, with white hood drawn up and
staff in hand, directs the building of the cloister. Two
monks accompany him. A dark man in the foreground is breaking
stone.
12. SS. MAURUS AND PLACIDUS BROUGHT TO THE SAINT.
A very crowded composition, about thirty-three figures
in foreground. To the left, St. Benedict blesses the two
children, who are presented by their fathers, in green and
blue robes. A boy in smart parti-coloured hose and slashed
sleeves looks on, and a centurion in green dress and blue
mantle leans upon his spear to the right.
There is much colour in this fresco, and several men on
horseback.
13. THE HEALING OF A BOY POSSESSED.
A distinctly naïve presentment. Under an altar St. Benedict
and two monks are seen kneeling, while a devil leads away
one of the brothers. Outside, the figure of St. Benedict is
repeated, slashing the shoulders of the truant monk, while
the evil spirit flies away in the air.
14. ST. BENEDICT RAISING WATER FROM THE ROCK.
In background a steep rocky hill. The saint, kneeling, prays
for water, which gushes out of the rock. To the left, he
receives the thanks of a group of kneeling monks.
15. THE MIRACLE OF THE HATCHET.
St. Benedict kneels on a promontory in the middle of lake,
accompanied by young monks, fishing for the hatchet. On
shore, to left, an old monk also fishes. In left distance St.
Benedict blesses two young brothers.
16. MAURUS SAVING THE LIFE OF PLACIDUS.
Under a loggia to the left Maurus relates how his companion
has fallen into the river. On the right, Maurus, sent by St.
Benedict, walks upon the water to save Placidus. Tufty shrubs
grow on the banks.
17. THE THEFT OF THE WINE AND BREAD.
This fresco is broken by a door into two compartments. To the
left, St. Benedict confides flask to kneeling youth in orange
robes; to right, the same youth goes into the wilderness.
This fresco has more colour than those immediately preceding
it.
18. FIORENZO’S ATTEMPT TO POISON ST. BENEDICT.
To the left Fiorenzo confides the poisoned roll to a servant,
who, in the foreground, presents it to the saint, who is
seated at table, being served by the brothers with wholesome
viands, while a crow on the floor eats the roll.
19. FIORENZO INTRODUCES WICKED WOMEN INTO THE CONVENT.
To left, a group of monks with an ass; to right, a crowd of
women, the foremost in shot crimson and green, the second
in sky blue, the third in blue robe with orange mantle, the
fourth in black. St. Benedict, from a loggia above, preaches
repentance to them.
20. THE PEASANT LIBERATED.
St. Benedict, with open book on lectern, raises his left hand
to free a peasant from the ropes by which he has been bound
by two knights. To right, a boy, in red, yellow, and white
hose, orange doublet, and black cap, holds white horse.
21. THE MONK PURSUED BY A DRAGON.
To the left, St. Benedict, with cowl drawn over his face, and
accompanied by three monks, pardons kneeling monk, who, at
right, is represented as being chased by a dragon.
22. DEATH OF ST. BENEDICT.
To the right, a Benedictine gives the Host to a priest, and,
to the left, the same priest, with five white-robed boys
following, lays the Host on the dead body of the Saint.
23. THE FUNERAL MASS OF ST. BENEDICT.
In centre a classical colonnade represents church with gilt
Gothic altar-piece. Three priests in cloth of gold say Mass;
to right, a choir chants from book on lectern. In foreground
kneels a group of women in bright gowns and with elaborately
braided hair. Six men sit on a bench to the right, and, to
the left, two nuns are seen slinking down the stairs.
24. APPARITION OF ST. BENEDICT.
Two monks in bed to the left; St. Benedict bends over them
with model of monastery in his hand. In the open air, to
the right, are seen men building up the red walls of the
monastery.
25. THE MULTIPLICATION OF BREAD.
To the left, St. Benedict and three monks blessing sacks of
flour; beautiful sunset over purple hills seen through open
door. In refectory, to right, six monks at table. A seventh
serves them, and above, from a pulpit, another reads aloud.
26. THE BURNING OF MONTE CASSINO.
In middle foreground, a number of Gothic knights and horses
in gay robes and caps, servants and pages. To right, a
somewhat confused crowd of wrestling figures. In right
background, the Goths are seen scaling the walls of Monte
Cassino and carrying faggots to fire it. To the left, the
tents of the Goths stretch across the country.
Very full of colour.
On stairs--
CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.
Within a _vesica_ composed of tiny cherub heads, Our Lord in
mauve and red, places the crown upon the head of the Virgin.
On cloister arch--
ST. BENEDICT INSTITUTING HIS ORDER.
The saint, in white, in centre of a large hall, hands a book
in either hand to groups of his disciples. To left is faintly
visible half the figure of a man in red cap and gown.
CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS.
Three-quarter figure, crowned by thorns, turned towards
right, turning face towards spectator. Soldier from behind
strikes Him.
CHRIST BOUND TO THE COLUMN.
Figure nude, save for slight muslin drapery. Bound to column
with hands behind Him. Mauve sky and green hills.
1505-1506.
MADONNA WITH ST. PETER AND ST. MICHAEL.
Over the door of the Father-General’s room.
PIETÀ.
On one of the staircases.
TURIN, GALLERY.
MADONNA ENTHRONED. Panel. 2.25 × 1.54 = 7.6 × 5.2. [No. 63.]
The Virgin, in red robe, with indigo mantle turned back with
orange, is seated upon a throne with curtains held back by
two flying _putti_. Beneath her are grouped St. Catharine of
Alexandria in emerald green, St. Jerome with his lion, and
St. John with his eagle, in shades of red brown, and St. Lucy
in emerald green.
The latter and the two _putti_ seem to have been very much
retouched, and the whole panel is highly varnished. The
Virgin, however, seems to be in fairly good condition.
About 1512.
_Brought from Colle in Val d’Elsa, and sold to the gallery by
Cav. Rosselli Del Turco of Florence for 1200 scudi._
HOLY FAMILY. Panel. 0.64 × 0.45 = 2.2 × 1.6. [No. 56.]
Madonna, in crude red and blue robes, before olive-green
canopy. Christ Child playing with bird. St. Joseph,
clean-shaven, peers over her left shoulder.
_From Casa Tolomei, Siena. Sold to the gallery by Baron
Garriod._
LUCREZIA. Panel. 0.99 × 0.76 = 3.4 × 2.7. [No. 59.]
Lucrezia, in bluish green robe and white vest, with red hair,
holds the dagger in her right hand ready to strike. Eyes
raised; mouth, with square corners, slightly open. Collatinus
to her left in dark green. To right a figure in a turban,
which might be that of a female, but which is believed to be
her father. Bust of Tarquin behind.
Very cold in colour, flesh-tints blue.
_From Royal Palace._
TREQUANDA, CASTELLO DI, COLLEGIATA.
ASCENSION. Fresco.
This fresco is doubtfully admitted to be by Sodoma by
Frizzoni, who holds it one of his least successful works.
VAPRIO, VILLA MELZI.
MADONNA AND CHILD. Fresco.
A colossal figure of the Virgin, visible to waist only, with
parted flowing hair, holding the infant Christ upon her left
arm and clasping His right hand with her right. Very unequal
in its drawing.
Ascribed to Sodoma by Morelli and Frizzoni.
Date between 1518 and 1525.
VENICE, LAYARD COLLECTION.
MADONNA AND CHILD. Panel.
VERCELLI, COLLECTION OF SIGNOR AVOCATO ANT. BORGOGNA.
HOLY FAMILY. Circular.
Madonna and St. Joseph adoring infant Christ, with kneeling
angel and little St. John. Much damaged. Formerly attributed
to Cesare da Sesto.
Early work.
_Bought at the Scarpa sale._
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS
1501 Madonna and Child with Saints. Described
by Landi, quoted by Della
Valle, disappeared by end of sixteenth
century
Madonna and Child
Madonna and Child. Placed above the _Found recently,
organ in S. Francesco and now in the
possession of
Mrs. Richter_
1502-3 Deposition _Siena Gallery_,
No. 343
Nativity _Siena Gallery_,
No. 444
Nativity _Vercelli_
Holy Family with Two Angels _Dorchester House,
Park Lane_
Charity. A tondo consisting of two
women and four children, formerly
in the possession of the Chigi, now
belonging to Count Bobrinski
Portrait of Pandolfo Petrucci _Lost_
Portrait of a Saracini Lady _Lost_
Portrait of a Toscani Lady _Lost_
Portrait of a Lady _Frankfort, Städel
Institute_
1503 Frescoes--St. Anne in Creta _Pienza_
Christ multiplying Loaves and Fishes
Distribution of Loaves and Fishes
Bishop with Six Olivetans
Pietà
Saint Anne enthroned with Virgin
Bust of Redeemer
1505-6 Frescoes of life of St. Benedict around _Mount Oliveto_
cloister. The frescoes in the cloister
are twenty-six in number, and were
painted in the following order, turning
to the left, and entering the
cloister from the atrium:
1. Saint Benedict who set out from
Norcia to Rome
2. The Roman School with Master in
Chair and Scholars attending
3. The Nurse’s broken Bushel
4. St. Benedict taking Monastic Habit
5. St. Deodato who hands food over
a rock to St. Romano
6. St. Benedict’s Easter Dinner
7. Shepherds who present the Saint
with Fruit and Vegetables
8. Devils tempt Saint, who throws
himself in a Bed of Thorns
9. Various Ecclesiastics with Saint
Benedict
10. The Poisoned Cup breaks at Sign
of Cross by St. Benedict
11. Building of Monastery of Subiaco
12. St. Maurus and Placidus on Horseback
13. Saint healing a Youth possessed by
a Devil
14. St. Benedict raising Water from the
Rock
15. Miracle of the Hatchet
16. Placidus saved by Maurus from
Drowning
17. Youth stealing Bread and Wine
18. Fiorenzo’s attempt to poison the Saint
19. Fiorenzo introduces the Bad Women
20. The Peasant Liberated
21. Monk pursued by a Dragon
22. Saint Dead with Weeping Disciples
23. Obsequies sung over Saint
24. Apparition of St. Benedict
25. Multiplication of Bread
26. Barbarians burning Monte Cassino
_About the Corridors_
Christ bearing Cross
Christ bound to Column
St. Benedict giving his Order
Coronation of the Virgin
1506 Panel of Christ bearing the Cross
Made for S. Francesco, Siena, where
it perished in the fire of 1655
1507 Fresco of Dancing Cherubs, and work _Rome, Camera della
on ceiling Segnatura_
Madonna _Milan, Brera_
Fresco of St. Ives _St. Gemignano,
Prison Chapel_
1512 Fresco of House-front for Agostino Bardi _Siena_
Quoted by Vasari, “Alla Postierla
dipissue a fresco la facciate della casa
di Messer Agostino de’ Bardi senese,
nella quale erano alcune cose lodevoli,
ma per lo pin sono state consumate
dell’ aria e del tempo”
Madonna and Child with Five Saints _Turin_
1513 Madonna with SS. Gemignano and _S. Gemignano_
Nicolo of Bari
Alexander’s Marriage _Rome, Villa
Farnesina_
Alexander and Darius _Rome, Villa
Farnesina_
1513-14 Vulcan _Rome, Villa
Farnesina_
1513-15 St. Christopher _Rome, Spada
Gallery_
Panel. Believed to be either a Rape of _Prince Mario
the Sabines or the casting out of Rhea Chigi, Rome_
Silvia--described in the list quoted by
Della Valle
Madonna and Child with St Joseph _Turin_
1513-15 Leda. Believed by Richter to be an _Rome, Borghese
old copy of an original, now lost, Gallery_, No. 434
form attributed to the school of
Leonardo
1515 Last Supper _Florence, Monte
Oliveto_
Model of two Apostles in Bronze
1517 St. George and the Dragon _Richmond, Doughty
House_
The Flagellation _Siena_, No. 374
Charity. Attributed originally to _Berlin Gallery_
Baldassare Peruzzi, recognised as
Sodoma’s by Morelli
1518 Fresco of Presentation of the Virgin _Siena, Oratory of
St. Bernardino_
Fresco of Salutation _Siena, Oratory of
St. Bernardino_
Fresco of Assumption _Siena, Oratory of
St. Bernardino_
Adoration of the Magi _Siena_
1518 Lucrezia Romano given to Pope Leo X.
1518-25 Magdalen _Dr. Frizzoni,
Milan_
Madonna and Child _Ginoulhiac Family_
Madonna and Child. Assigned by _Vaprio_
Morelli and Frizzoni to Sodoma, but
still doubtful
Portrait of a Man _Bergamo, Morelli
Collection_
1525 Fresco of Gethsemane _Siena Gallery_,
No. 2
Descent into Limbo _Siena Gallery_,
No. 46
Christ bearing the Cross _Siena, Chapel of
Villa Griccioli_
1525 Bier of the Company of Sta. Trinita. _Siena, S. Donato_
Believed at one time to be by
Beccafumi and Marco de Siena
1525 St. Sebastian _Uffizi_, No. 1279
1526 Bier of S. Giovanni della Morte _Siena, Church of
SS. Giovanni and
Gennaro_
1526 Fresco of St. Catharine _Siena, S. Domenico_
1527 Drawings for Pavement of Cathedral
1529 Fresco of St. Ansano _Siena, Palazzo
Pubblico, Sala
del Mappamondo_
St. Victor _Siena, Pal.
Pubblico, Sala
del Mappamondo_
1530 Frescoes of St. James and Madonna _Siena, St.
Spirito_
Fresco of St. Christopher _Siena, Arte dei
Calzolai_
Dead Christ with Two Angels _London, Dr.
Richter_
1531 Fresco of Nativity _Siena, Gate of St.
Viene_
1532 Fresco of Coronation of Virgin _Siena, S.
Bernardino_
1534 Fresco of St. Bernardo Tolomei _Siena, Pal.
Pubblico, Sala
del Mappamondo_
1535 Fresco of Resurrection _Siena, Palazzo
Pubblico, Sala
dei Matrimoni_
Resurrection _Naples Gallery_
Madonna with St. Leonard
1537 Madonna with SS. Ansano and Galgano _Siena, Palazzo
Pubblico, Sala
della Biccherna_
1538 Panel of James V. of Piombino _Not preserved_
Phaeton falling from his Chariot _Lost, or mistaken
for work by
another master_
1539 Fresco of Madonna and Saints _Siena, Capella dei
Nobili_
1541-42 Sacrifice of Isaac _Pisa Cathedral_
Pietà _Pisa Cathedral_
Madonna and Saints _Pisa Gallery_
QUOTATIONS FROM CERTAIN CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS RELATIVE TO THE LIFE OF
SODOMA
ST. ANNA IN CRETA
Extract from the Archives of the Monastery:
“L’ anno 1503 a di 1 Luglio, D. Andrea Coscia da Napoli, cellerario di
S. Anna, convenne con maestro G. A. da Vercelli, pittore, delle pitture
da farsi in refectorio di S. Anna, per sc. 20 d’ oro e le spese. E del
tutto ne appare una scritta di mano del detto cellerario segnata con
questo segno * ... sc. 140¼.”
_Libro Lungo. Segnato O. fol. 95 a tergo._
MONTE OLIVETO
Document referring to the appointment of Sodoma:
“Habitu tamen hoc tertia ejus electionias (Anno 1505 idibus aprilis),
aliquanta et temporis inter capedine et pecuniarum commoditate ...
incoeptum, ut sapientis est, tandem opus complere decrevit. Et
orientalem merdionalemque claustri partem, etsi diverso pictore, haud
tamen inferiore pictura decoravit. Et nisi pictoris incuria adfuisset,
universum ut optabat, jam jam perfectum esset opus.” _M. I._ p. 75.
Document referring to payment:
1505 Giovan Antonio dipentore del nostro claustro deve havere per una
historia, quale ha facta ne la faccia verso l’ uscio del Refectorio,
civè la prima dove sonno le donne che ballano, ducati due d’ accordo:
cosi £70.
Item deve havere per septe altre historie ne la medesima facciata, a
rasone di ducati septe la historia: lire 343.
E più deve havere ducati septanta sette per undici historie, quali ha
facte nel claustro verso el dormitorio de’ vecchi: che sono lire, 539.
E più de’ havere docati otantaquatro d’ oro che sono per dodici storie
che lui ha fate nel claustro soprascripto: che sono lire 588. _Partite
tratte gia dai Libri dell’ Archivio del Monastero di Mont’ Oliveto
Maggiore._
Document referring to his Marriage:
1. 1510 28th October.
Johannes Antonius Jacobi de Bazis, pictor de Verzé fuit confessius
habuisse et recepisse pro dotibus domine Beatricis, olim filie Luce
Bartolomei Egidii, et sorori Bartholomei et Nicholai filiorum dicte
Luce--florenos 450 de libri quatuor pro floreno. _Arch. de’ Contratti
di Siena. Rogito di Ser Alessandro della Grammatica filza dal 1507 al
1515, No. 61._
2. Same date.
Johannis Antonius Jacobi de Bazis, pictor habitator civitatis Senarum,
fuit confessius habuisse pro dotibus domine Beatricis filie. Luce
Bartolomei Egidii alias Luce de Galli flor 450 de libri quatuor
pro floreno. _Arch. del Registro da Siena. Libro delle Gabelle de’
Contratti ad annum, a. c. 103._
A descriptive list of the horses which Sodoma ran the palio of St.
Ambrogio, 1513:
Soddome: unus equos leardus moscatus, ragazzius: Baptista.
Soddome: unus equos morellus, ragazzius: Betto.
1527, unus equos leardus pomellatus sfregiatus: ragazzius, Tempestino
di Modena.
_Arch. de’ Contr. di Siena. Sessione dei quattro di Biccherna, tra le
carte di Ser Achille Bertini._
Document relating to the figures of the Apostles to be cast for the
Cathedral. 1515 22 di Giugno.
Deliberaverunt locare ... magistro Johanni Antonio alias Sodoma
pictori, ad faciendum unam figuram unius apostoli brunzii in Ecclesia
Cathedrali cum illis conditionibus prout locata fuit Jacobo Cozzarelli.
Item locaverunt aliam figuram, et hoc ad beneplacitum operariorum, si
ipsis videbitur. Et quod ipse Johannis Antonius teneatur docere quatuor
pueros dicti Operis Gratis, et sine ullo premio ad pingendum. _Arch.
dell’ Opera del Duomo._ _Libro di Memorie segnato E-G._ a. c. 28 verso.
Documenti--San Bernardino:
1518-31 Dicembre.
Il di detto (31 dic.) ducati trenta si fanno buoni a Messer Giovantonio
detto Soddoma per sua Manifattura della Storia de l’oferta del tempio
della Vergine Maria fatta più di fa.
_Ducati_ 35 si fanno buoni a Messer Giovannantonio detto che sonno per
sua Manifattura de la storia de la incoronazione della Vergine Maria.
_Ducati_ 10 a Messer Giovannantonio detto Soddoma per sua Manifattura
della Storia di S. Francesco de la finestra.
_Duc._ 14 a Messer Giovannantonio detta per la sua manifattura di St.
Lodovico chola finestra.
_Duc._ 8 per la Manifattura della Storia di S. Antonio di Padua.
_Archivio del patrimonio ecclesiastico. Compagnia di S. Bernardino.
Registro C. Entrata e Uscita. Carta 28._
S. BERNARDO TOLOMEI
1534.
Ultimamente per haver ancora noi procurato che la pittura del beato
Bernardo ne la sala del Mappamondo fusse finita dal Soddoma dipentore
de la quale ne ha gia avuto scudi otto, sicome da’ precessori nostri ne
era stato lassato in notula; et havendo esso Sodoma a esser satisfatto
del restante di detta opera quale ne ha condotta a perfettione:
piacerà a V. S. Magnifiche fare che detto Soddoma sia fatto satisfare
de la lodevole opera da Messer Francesco Tholomei dignissimo operaio
de la Chiesa Cathedrale, si come esso a noi et ad detto Sodoma ne ha
largamente promesso.
_Arch. delle Riformagioni di Siena._ _Scritture Concistoriali_, No. 51.
_Notula ai sucessori della Signoria ad annum._
CAPPELLA DEI NOBILI
1536-37, 14 di Marzo.
Per parte de li spettatissimi quattro cittadini operari e comissari del
l’ illustrissimo concistoro dei Magnifici Signori ... a fare dipingere
l’ altare della Cappella della piazza pubblica deputati--voi Crescenzio
Turamini, date e pagate al generoso cavaliere messer Giovannantonio
Soddoma, pittore, deputato a dipengere decto altare, scudi 15, cioè
scudi quindici quali se li danno a buon conto, e per dar principio alia
detta opera, secondo le convenzioni fatte con detti operai.
_Arch. dotto Scritture Concistoriali. Filza 55, ad annum._
1537.
Spese si faranno e fecionsi a la Cappella di Piazza per dipignerla a
di XVII. di Setembre Lire tre che se li fan buoni a Ugo Berti nostro
Camerlingo che li pagò a Pier Giovanni scarpellino per rompere el archo
del nicchio.
1539, 2 Aprile.
Lire cinquantasei, se li fan buoni a Ugo Berti camerlingo che li pagò â
Messer Giovannantonio Sodoma, dipentore, per resto de la dipegnitura de
la chapelle di Piazza.
_Arch. dell’ Opera del Duomo, libro giallo detto dell’ assunta a carte,
369._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Quoted by Lanzi, _History of Painting_, vol. i. p. 295.
[2] Rogito di Guidetto Pelliparis, _Notul_ 4, fol. 334.
[3] Baldinucci, _Notizie dei professori di disegno_, ii. p. 117.
[4] Milanesi, _Documenti per la Storia dell’ arte Senese_, iii. p. 182.
[5] Don Luigi Bruzza, _Notizie intorno alia patria di Sodoma. Misc.
Storia Italiano._ Tomo i.
[6] Ugurgieri, _Le Pompe Sanesi_, ii. p. 353.
[7] Lanzi, _Descrizione del Duomo di Siena_, MS.
[8] _Rogiti di Guidetto di Pelliparis._ Notul 18, fol. 592, Doc. C.
[9] An inscription on the frame of one of his early panels is dated
1501.
[10] Vasari. Ed. Sansoni. Florence, 1879. p. 101.
[11] Bottari. _Lettere pittoriche_, vol. v. n. 42.
[12] Della Valle. _Lettere Senesi_, iii. p. 330.
[13] Arch. del Monastero. Libro Lungo, o fol. 95, a tergo.
[14] xii. Heft. 1, p. 72.
[15] Morelli. _Borghese and Doria Pamphili Galleries_, p. 152.
[16] Morelli. _Borghese and Doria Pamphili Galleries_, p. 152.
[17] “13 Ottobre 1508 il Magnifico Sigismondo Chigi fa sicurta per
Giovanni Antonio dei Bazzi di Vercelli, a cui è commesso da fare alcune
pitture nelle camere superiori del Pontefice nel Palazzo Vaticano.”
Arch. Della Soc. Romana di Storia Patria, a. 1879, p. 486.
[18] Archivio del registro da Siena. Libro delle gabelle dei contratti,
1510, a. c. 103.
[19] Arch. dei Contratti. Filza dei rogiti di ser Nicaolo Posi dal 1508
al 1512.
[20] Arch. dei Contratti. Rogiti di ser Mariano Benucci. Filza 7, No.
62.
[21] _Arte Italiana del Rinascimento._ p. 135.
[22] Luigi Pecori. _Storia della terra di San Gemignano_, p. 563.
[23] _Lib. di Prov. di San Gemignano._ Lettera G. No. 64.
[24] Frizzoni. “_Intorno alla dimora del Sodoma a Roma giornale di
erudizione artistica._” Perugia, 1872. Vol. i. p. 208.
[25] _Aretino’s Letters._ Paris, 1609. Book iii. p. 163.
[26] Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1870. p. 311.
[27] _Lettere Senesi_, iii. p. 267.
[28] _Italian Painters._ _Borghese and Doria Pamphili Galleries_, p.
155.
[29] Carta privata dei Medici. Arch. di stato di Firenze, filza 114. c.
191.
[30] Arch. dei deliberagioni della Balia, vol. 47, 7th November 1514.
[31] Arch. dei Contratti di Siena, Rogiti di Ser Alessandro di Ser
Francesco Martini, 1516.
[32] Vasari, vi. p. 634.
[33] Arch. dei Contratti di Siena. Filza S dei lodi di Ser Francesco
Figliucci.
[34] “22 Novembre, 1518. Actum Regii in Ecclesia S. Jacobi præsenti
ibidem Magistri Joanne Antonio de’ Bazzi de Parma pictore ad præsens
habitatore Regii,” etc.
[35] Rio, _Léonard da Vinci et son école_, p. 150. Mündler, _Beiträge
zu Jacob Burckhardt’s Cicerone_, p. 32. Amoretti, _Trattato della
pittura di L. da Vinci_, p. 101.
[36] Archivio del Patrimonio Ecclesiastico d’Entrata e Uscita della
detta Compagnia. Reg. C. 1. a. c. 38, A.
[37] E. Schurè. _Le drame musicale_, vol. i. p. 180.
[38] Angelo Mosso. _La Fatica_, Chap. viii. p. 228.
[39] Arch. dell Opera del Duomo. Libro di tre angeli. a. c. 465.
[40] Arch. delle Riformagioni di Siena. Scritture Concistoriali, filza,
41.
[41] Ricordi del Convento di Santo Spirito conservati nell’ Archivio
del Patrimonio Ecclesiastico nell’ opera del Duomo.
[42] Arch. dei Contratti. Rogiti di ser Galgano Faleri.
[43] Reproduced in the collection of heliotypes from the Morelli
Gallery edited by Dr. Frizzoni. (Milan, Hoepli, 1886.)
[44] First quoted by Ugurgieri, and then by Della Valle. _Lettere
Senesi_, ii. p. 244.
[45] Arch. dei Contratti. Fra i rogiti di Ser Sigisimondo Trecerchi.
[46] Arch. delle scritture, Concistoriali. Filza, 55, 1538.
[47] Della Valle, iii. 267.
1. Una Madonna del Sodoma con ornamento dorato, alta braccia due e
mezzo. sc. 150.
2. Quadro del Sodoma per lungo, che rappresenta Numitore, che condanna
alla morte da Madre di Romolo e Remo con i Bambini, etc. sc. 100.
3. Due quadri del Sodoma compagni alti un braccio e mezzo, lunghi due
braccia e mezzo, rappresentati in uno la caduta di Fetonte dal Carro,
nell’ altro Dafne segnita da Apollo, convertita in alloro.
4. Una resurrezione del Sodoma.
[48] Par. xvii. 56.
[49] It was painted in 1542, and he was paid 526 lire and 10 soldi.
[50] Arch. delle Riformazioni di Siena. Filza 35, delle lettere.
[51] Vasari, _Le Opere_, iii. 685.
[52] _Italienische Forschungen_, ii. 386.
INDEX
_Adoration of the Magi_ (S. Agostino, Siena), 50, 80, 91, 116, _ill._
50
_Alexander, Family of Darius before_ (Farnesina), 35, 114, _ill._ 34
_Alexander, Marriage of_ (Farnesina), 33, 114, _ill._ 32;
_sketches for_, 34, _ill._ 32
Arduini, The, their lawsuit against Sodoma, 80, 91
Aretino, Pietro, his friendship with Sodoma, 33
_Ascension_ (Trequanda), 81, 131
_Assumption of the Virgin, The_ (San Bernardino), 49, 117, _ill._ 50
Balducci, apprenticed to Sodoma, 47
Bazzi, Giovanni Antonio. _See_ Sodoma
Beccafumi, 3, 71;
associated with Sodoma, 48
Bernazzano, 14
Biers, Panels for, by Sodoma, 62
Biringucci, Vannoccio, 80
_Birth of the Virgin_ (Carmine), 82, 118
Bramantino, 27
Brazzi, Lorenzo, pupil of Sodoma, 47
Bruzza, Don Luigi, on Sodoma’s early life, 3-6
Camera della Segnatura, Sodoma’s decorations in, 27, 28, 113, _ill._
26
Carracci, Annibale, 3, 81
Cesare da Sesto, 14
_Charity_ (Berlin), 46, 62, 107
Chigi, Agostino, 3, 26, 27, 29, 32
Chigi, Prince Mario, 36
_Christ bearing the Cross_ (Monte Oliveto), 19, 130
_Christ bound to the Column_ (Siena Gallery), 2, 21, 43, 116, _ill._
44;
(Monte Oliveto), 19
_Christ, Head of_ (Nat. Gallery), 92, 104
_Christ in Hades_ (Siena Gallery), 21, 61, 115, _ill._ 60
_Circumcision, The_, by Signorelli, 86, 93;
the Child repainted by Sodoma, 86, 93
_Coronation of the Virgin, The_ (Monte Oliveto), 19, 129;
(San Bernardino, Siena), 117, _ill._ 50
_Darius, the Family of_, 35, 114, _ill._ 34
Della Quercia, Jacopo, 10
Del Piombo, Sebastiano, 23, 32
_Descent from the Cross, The_ (Siena Gallery), 12, 115, _ill._ 12
_Descent into Hades_ (Siena Gallery), 21, 61, 115, _ill._ 60
Farnesina, Building of the, 32;
frescoes in, 32, 33
_Female Portrait_ (Frankfort), 23, 107
Ferrara, Alfonso, Duke of, 52, 54
_Flagellation of Our Lord, The_, 43
_Gethsemane_ (Siena Gallery), 61, 115
Gianpietrino, 14, 46
Giovanone, 7
Gonzaga, Marquis Francesco, 45, 53
_Holy Family_ (Vercelli), 13, 131
_Holy Family with S. John_, etc. (Capt. Holford), 14, 105;
(Col. Cornwall Legh), 14, 105;
(Villa Borghese), 80, 113, _ill._ 82
_Holy Family_ (Genoa), 94, 111;
(Hospital, Siena), 95, 123
_Judgment of Pilate, The_, 43
_Last Supper, The_ (Monte Oliveto, Florence), 41, 110, _ill._ 40
_Leda_ (Villa Borghese), 21, 37, 113;
_drawings for_, 37, 62
Leo X., 3, 40
Leonardo da Vinci, Influence of on Sodoma, 7, 35;
picture of _Leda_ attributed to, 37;
_drawings of Leda_, 37, 38;
at Piombino, 40
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 70
Lorenzo di Credi, 14
_Lucretia, Paintings of_, by Sodoma, 45, 46
_Madonna and Child_ (Brera), 28, 29, 111, _ill._ 28;
(San Gemignano), 32;
(Turin), 38, 130;
(Munich), 39, 107;
(Ginoulhiac collection, Milan), 57, 112;
(Vaprio), 55, 131;
(Villa Borghese), 81, 113, _ill._ 82;
(Nat. Gallery), 92, 104;
(Bergamo), 94, 108;
(Layard collection), 94, 131;
(Mrs. Richter), 10, 96, 106;
(Asina-Lunga), 81, 108
_Madonna and Child with Saints_ (Turin), 31, 130, _ill._ 30;
(Pisa), 88, 113, _ill._ 88
_Madonna in Glory with Saints_ (Uffizi), 60, 109, _ill._ 60
_Madonna and S. Leonard_ (Palazzo Pubblico), 80, 81, 121, _ill._ 80
_Madonna and Child with S. John_ (Palazzo Pubblico), 81, 121, _ill._
82
_Madonna with S. Peter and S. Michael_ (Monte Oliveto), 20
Magagni, Girolamo, pupil of Sodoma, 47, 67, 68
_Male Head_ (Bergamo), 94, 108
Melozzo da Forlì, 28
Melzi, Francesco, 55
Michelangelo, 9, 27, 32, 35
_Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes_ (S. Anna in Creta, Siena), 16, 124
Monte Oliveto (Siena), Frescoes by Sodoma at, 18-23
Morelli, Analysis of Sodoma’s characteristics by, 23-25
_Nativity, The_ (Siena Gallery), 13, 115, _ill._ 14;
(Porta San Viene, Siena), 76, 123
Pacchia, Frescoes in San Bernardino by, 48, 50
Pacchiarotto, fresco of _San Bernardino_ by, _ill._ 56
_Penitent Magdalen_ (Dr. Frizzoni, Milan), 56, 111
_Persecution of Rhea Silvia, The_ (Chigi Palace, Rome), 36, 114
Peruzzi, Baldassare, 32, 46, 65, 85
Petrucci, The, of Siena, 53, 57
_Phaeton, The Fall of_ (lost picture), 85, 96;
_drawings for_, 85, 86
Piccolomini, Portraits of the, 51
_Pietà_ (Pisa Cathedral), 13, 87, 112;
(S. Anna in Creta, Siena), 17, 124;
(Monte Oliveto), 20;
(Villa Borghese), 63, 113;
(Casa Bambagini), 64, 123;
_drawings for_, 63, _ill._ 62;
(Costa collection), 94, 110;
(San Tommaso, Milan), 94, 112
Pinturicchio, 9, 26
Piombino, Prince of, 3, 40, 83, 96
_Presentation in the Temple, The_ (San Bernardino), 48, 117, _ill._ 48
_Procession to Calvary, The_ (Siena, Villa Griccioli), 61, 124
Raphael, Portrait of Sodoma in the _School of Athens_ by, 3, 28;
frescoes in the Farnesina, 32;
influence of on Sodoma, 35, 36, 72;
portrait drawing of Timoteo Viti wrongly attributed to, 93
_Resurrection_ (Palazzo Pubblico), 78, 121, _ill._ 76;
(Naples), 79, 112;
_study for_, 94
Riccio, son-in-law of Sodoma, 30, 47, 71, 87
_Roxana, Alexander and_, 33, 114, _ill._ 32;
_study for_, _ill._ 32
_Sacrifice of Isaac_ (Pisa), 87, 112, _ill._ 86
S. Anna in Creta, Siena, frescoes by Sodoma at, 16, 124
_S. Anne Enthroned_ (S. Anna in Creta, Siena), 17, 125
_S. Ansano_ (Palazzo Pubblico), 71, 120, _ill._ 72
_S. Benedict, Scenes in the Life of_ (Monte Oliveto), 18-22,
125-129, _ill._ 16, 18, 20
San Bernardino, Frescoes in the Oratory of, 48, 117
_San Bernardino_, by Pacchiarotto, _ill._ 56
_San Bernardo instituting his Order_ (Monte Oliveto), 20, 130
_S. Catherine, Scenes in the Life of_ (San Domenico), 64, 66,
_ill._ 64, 66, 68
_S. Catherine, The Vision of_, 2, 65, 119, _ill._ 64
_S. Christopher_ (Spada Gallery, Rome), 36, 114;
_study for_, 94
San Domenico, Siena, Sodoma’s work in, 64-67, 119
_S. George and the Dragon_ (Sir F. Cook), 46, 51, 54, 105
_S. Ives_ (San Gemignano), 31, 111
_S. Louis of Toulouse_ (San Bernardino, Siena), 118, _ill._ 54
_S. Sebastian_ (Uffizi), 2, 21, 58, 109, _ill._ _Front._, 58;
(Spanish Chapel, Siena), 74, 122
_S. Victor_ (Palazzo Pubblico), 70, 71, 120, _ill._ 70
_Salutation, The_ (San Bernardino), 49, 117, _ill._ 48
_School of Athens, The_, by Raphael, 3, 28
Scorel, Jan, 23
Signorelli, Frescoes at Monte Oliveto, by, 18;
his _Circumcision_, 86, 93
Sodoma, disliked by Vasari, 2, 3;
highly esteemed by contemporaries, 3;
his birth, 3;
apprenticed to Spanzotti, 6;
influence of Leonardo on, 7;
work at Siena, 8;
his love of animals, 10, 22;
early works, 10-14;
portraits, 15;
frescoes at S. Anna in Creta, 16;
frescoes at Monte Oliveto, 18-22;
female portrait at Frankfort, 23;
Morelli’s analysis of the characteristics of, 23-25;
taken to Rome by Chigi, 27;
decorations in the Camera della Segnatura, 27, 28;
return to Siena and marriage, 29;
second visit to Rome, 32;
friendship with Aretino, 33;
frescoes in the Farnesina, 33-36;
influence of Leonardo and Raphael on, 35, 36;
visit to Piombino, 40,
and Florence, 40;
fresco of the _Last Supper_, at Monte Oliveto (Florence), 41;
origin of his name, 42, 43;
frescoes at San Francesco, 43;
_Christ bound to the Column_, 43, 45;
his treatment of the human figure, 44, 45;
_Lucretia_, 45;
made Cavalliere di Cristo by Leo X., 45;
_Charity_, 46;
his pupils, 47;
the San Bernardino frescoes, 48;
the _Adoration of the Magi_, 50;
_S. George and the Dragon_, 51;
disappearance from Siena, 53;
doubtful works at Milan, 55;
return to Siena, 57;
_S. Sebastian_, 58-60;
frescoes in San Domenico, 64-67;
action against Magagni, 67-68;
decorations in the Palazzo Pubblico, 70 _et seq._;
frescoes in the Spanish chapel, 72, 73;
made a Count by the Emperor, 75;
other frescoes in Siena, 75;
later works, 80-88;
comic list of his possessions, 82;
last commission from the Signoria of Siena, 83;
friendship of the Prince of Piombino for, 84;
at Volterra, 85,
and Pisa, 87;
his death, 88;
portraits of himself, 90-92;
works in English collections, 92, 93;
minor works, 94;
lost pictures, 95, 96;
general character, 97
_Sodoma, Portraits of_, by himself, 90, _ill._ 90
Spanzotti, Sodoma apprenticed to, 6
Tamagni, Vincenzo, 30
_Tolomei, San Bernardo_, 64, 72, 77, 121
Tizioni, The, 6
Vasari, his dislike of Sodoma, 2, 3;
account of Sodoma’s eccentricities, 10;
his injustice to Sodoma, 43
[Illustration]
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