1477 -1549 · Vercelli, Siena, Rome and Italian Renaissance

Narrative frescoes, tender figures and moving bodies allow Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Il Sodoma, to unite Lombard heritage, Leonardesque sweetness and Sienese color.

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi was born in Vercelli in 1477. At thirteen, he entered the studio of Giovanni Martino Spanzotti for seven years. This Piedmontese training brought him drawing, portraiture and indirect contact with the Lombard innovations of Leonardo da Vinci. After a probable passage through Milan, he settled in Tuscany and made Siena his main home. His first major documented commissions were the frescoes of the monastery of Sant'Anna in Camprena in 1503 -1504. From 1505, he continued in the cloister of Monte Oliveto Maggiore the cycle of the Life of Saint Benedict begun by Luca Signorelli. Twenty-six scenes show his talent as a narrator: architecture, monks, animals, gestures familiars and miraculous episodes are organized with vivid clarity. The artist depicts himself in a sumptuous costume, accompanied by tame animals, a sign of a personality that sources describe as eccentric. The nickname "Sodoma", attested in documents from 1512 and sometimes signed by the artist himself, has received contradictory interpretations; its origin remains uncertain and should not serve as a moral biography. In Rome, around 1508, Bazzi worked on the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura before Raphael's intervention. He directly discovered the new Roman monumentality there. Returning to Siena, he painted a Deposition where softened contours and pain restraint and landscape depth combine Leonardo, Perugino and local tradition. A second Roman stay led him around 1517 to Agostino Chigi's Villa Farnesina. The Wedding of Alexander and Roxane displays nudes, gestures and ancient decor in an elegant and sensual scene. In Siena, his works dedicated to Saint Catherine give ecstasy a physical intensity; the subjects of the Passion concentrate emotion in faces and bodies. The subjects of the Passion concentrate emotion in faces and bodies. The Allegory of Love combines mythological figures, children and moral discourse in a composition formerly interpreted in several ways. In 1525, the gongalon of Saint Sebastian unites the beauty of the martyr and the protective function against the epidemic. Also active in Volterra, Pisa, Lucca and Piombino, Bazzi died in Siena in 1549. His work transmits to the Sienese school the novelties of Lombardy, Florence and Rome without losing its singular chromatic softness. The "Il Sodoma" selection notably compares Love and Charity and The Ecstasy of Saint Catherine of Siena. His reading favors the material.

Il Sodoma tells with the bodies: a lowered gaze, a twist or a hanging hand is enough to convey the Leonardo sweetness towards the Sienese drama.