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]