Art: Lazy Genius

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477-1549) has been called both a great artist and a hack imitator. Pope Leo X made him a Cavalier of the Order of Christ; Art Historian Vasari, also a contemporary, described him simply as "a beast." He was also known as "The Sodomite," which pleased him; Bazzi signed his letters "Il Sodoma"—the name he is known by today.

Last week Siena, his home town, celebrated the 401st anniversary of Il Sodoma's death with a full-dress retrospective exhibition drawn from France and Germany as well as Italy. Along with the 70-odd paintings and drawings on show was a batch of personal documents that proved him to have been the luxury product of a wide-open age; lazy, cynical, proud, humorous and wild.

He wrote songs in praise of homosexuality and accompanied them on the lute with what Vasari grudgingly described as "no little facility." He kept a string of race horses, and pets by the dozen: jays, apes, badgers, squirrels, marmosets, turtle doves, and a raven which he taught to answer the door. In an inventory of goods filed with the Siena tax collector in 1512, Il Sodoma also listed "a donkey that talks theology to the priests."

When he was low in funds, II Sodoma gave in to the pleas of his admiring patrons and worked a bit. He had well assimilated the painting techniques of his consistently great contemporaries, Da Vinci and Raphael. He had once taken the trouble to copy Da Vinci's painting of Leda, which has since been lost, and II Sodoma's copy was long mistaken for the original. He could draw, when he cared to, with serene accuracy; he knew how to round out shapes by blurring their contours (sfumato), and how to steep his fingers in rippling depths of light and shadow (chiaroscuro).

Such pictures as his Nuptials of Alexander in Rome's Villa Farnesina and the Saint Sebastian which he painted on a processional banner (see cut) rivaled the best of Renaissance art. Others were quick, badly botched candidates for the booby prize. Their quality, or lack of it, was apt to depend on the fee.