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]