_Bazzi_, called _Il Sodoma_ (Lombard: 1477-1549).
The confusion in the use of the word "school" is illustrated
in the case of Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (sometimes wrongly given
as Razzi), called also Il Sodoma. He spent most of his life
at Siena, and is often grouped therefore with the Sienese
School. But he was born at Vercelli, in Piedmont--being the
son of a shoemaker--and "ripened into an artist during the two
years he spent at Milan with Leonardo da Vinci" (1498-1500).
Sodoma is therefore, says Morelli (_German Galleries_, p.
428), to be reckoned as one of the Milanese-Lombard School.
"Nay, I believe I should not be far wrong were I to maintain
that the majority of the better works ascribed to Leonardo in
private collections are by him.... Young Bazzi while at Milan
seems to have taken Leonardo for his model, not only in art,
but even in personal appearance and fancies. All his life he
loved to play the cavalier, and, like Leonardo, always kept
saddle-horses in his stable, and all kinds of queer animals
in his house."[226] Vasari gives an amusing, though probably
apocryphal, account of his excesses, and represents him as a
lewd fellow of the baser sort, with whom no respectable person
would have anything to do. But Raphael so respected Bazzi and
his work that he introduced his portrait (erroneously called
Perugino's) by the side of his own in his celebrated fresco of
the "School of Athens." But at any rate Sodoma was a careless,
jovial fellow--dividing his time between the studio and the
stable; and when cash ran short or a horse ran wrong, he would
meet his liabilities with a hastily dashed-off picture. This
very Madonna may perhaps have paid off a racing debt.
"Sodoma," says a distinguished German critic, "had a poetic
soul, full of glowing and deep feeling, a richly endowed
creative mind, but no inclination for severe earnest work"
(Jansen). His execution is unequal, but at his best he is one
of the most attractive of all the Italian painters. No one
will deny this who recalls the fresco, in the upper floor
of the Farnesina Palace, of "The Marriage of Alexander and
Roxana"--"one of the most enchanting pictures of the whole
Renaissance," or who has studied the painter's work in the
churches, the Gallery, and the Palazzo Publico of Siena. The
figure of "St. Ansano" in the latter place may be taken as an
example of the dignity which Sodoma was capable of imparting
to his types. The "Christ bound to the Column" in the Siena
gallery is a fine example of his power as a colourist and his
command of pathetic expression; while in the figure of Eve in
the "Limbo" in the same gallery, and in more than one Holy
Family, we may see his innate sense of feminine beauty and
grace. It is supposed that Sodoma went as a young man to Milan
and there imbibed the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, but this
theory (maintained by Morelli) of a close connection between
Leonardo and Sodoma is not accepted by all critics. In 1501 he
went to Siena, where, in the stagnation of the local school, he
found ample openings for his abilities. To this period belong
the series of frescoes representing the history of St. Benedict
in the Convent of Monte Oliveto. In 1507 Sodoma was taken by
the Sienese merchant, Agostino Chigi, to Rome. He began to
decorate the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican, but the
Pope transferred the commission to Raphael. Sodoma was again in
Rome in 1514, when he painted for Chigi the frescoes already
referred to. In the interval he had returned to Siena, where he
married the daughter of an innkeeper. From 1515 onwards he made
Siena his headquarters. Copies of some of the works mentioned
above may be seen in the Arundel Society's Collection.
This picture, which is hardly a satisfactory example of the painter,
is one of those supposed by some critics to have been painted in the
years 1518-20, during which he is believed to have revisited Milan.
Others place it later in the artist's career. "Probably one of his late
'pot-boilers.' It was originally in the Rossini 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"
(_Sodoma_, by the Contessa Priuli Bon, 1900, p. 92).