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.