4 GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI
October 23rd, 1534/ which sets forth the purchase
by the artist of a house in the Vallerozzi quarter,
he is styled, '' Magnifico et generoso equiti Domino
Joanni Antonio J acomi de Basis, pictorj de Verzt,
alias el Sogdoma " / showing that officially, at any
rate, Bazzi then went by his earlier patronymic,
and that that name had been superseded neither
by Tizoni nor by the sobriquet. Neither does
the fact that he is described as " Sodoma " only,
or its variants, in official commissions, entries in
account-books, etc., and in the correspondence
with the Prince of Piombino, support Mr. Douglas'
very sweeping assertion. Mr. Douglas further 2
argues that the version Tisoni in the Pisan docu-
ments is due, not to the error of a careless scribe,
but to the fact that in Piedmont the double "z"
is softened into " s." This would be a plausible
plea had the documents in question been registered
in the archives of a Piedmont ese town. In Vercelli
itself it has yet to be discovered whether in written
evidence the Tizzoni family-name ever appears
thus softened; and the Bazzi family certainly always
figure therein as '' de Basis'' and not '' Basis''
But the contention, such as it is, falls to the ground,
since the records, in which these readings occur,
are both Ttiscan i.e. drawn up in a district where
this suggested modification does not hold good.
Padre Bruzza asserts that the artist only
assumed the patronymic out of sheer vanity and
1 Archivio Notarile Provinciale di Siena. Rogiti di Ser Corti
Baldassare di Pienza. Gestioni Notarili anteriori all' anno 1585.
Reparto A, Busta 988, No. 192.
2 The Burlington Magazine, May 1902, vol. i., No. 3.
FRANCESCO DE' TIZONI 5
caprice : but whatever may have been the reason
for his assuming this surname, Francesco de'Tizoni
{Francexio de TicionibusY v^diS one of the witnesses
to the Articles of Apprenticeship,^ entered into by
the young artist's father on his son's behalf with
Martino Spanzotto, at that time one of the leaders
of the Vercellese School. This circumstance
proves that a friendship existed between the shoe-
maker and his noble fellow-townsman. It is
therefore neither improbable nor impossible that
Giovanni Antonio assumed the name of the family
friend from motives of deference to his earliest
patron and artistic sponsor.
' This cannot have been Francesco Tizzone, Lord of Desana, who
resigned his fief to his brother Ludovico in 1483, since he died in 1485.
Nor can it be Ludovico's youngest son Francesco, a Franciscan monlc,
who being the youngest of the seven sons of a father himself only born in
1456, would scarcely have been as old as the young Giovanni Antonio
Bazzi. It probably was another Francesco, a cadet cousin of the house.
Other younger branches of the De' Tizzoni were {a) Counts of Rive,
and {b) Counts (afterwards Marquises) of Crescentino. The elder
branch were first of all Lords, then Counts of Desana, and Imperial
Vicars with the right of coinage. Desana is a district in the diocese
of Vercelli, which includes Tricero, Aziliano, Lignana, and Ronsecco.
This family also owned large properties in the States of Monferrato,
Trino, Crescentino, and Ponsano. They were strong Ghibellines, and
supporters of the Gonzaga family. Count Giovanni Bartolommeo Tizzone
was ambassador in 15 16 from the Emperor Maximilian to King
Henry VIII. of England. (For further information as to this family
see Costanzo Gazzera, Meviorie Storiche dei Tizzoni, Conti di Desana :
Turin, 1842.)
It is perhaps worth noting that Bertoletti (A. Bertoletti, Ariisti
Loinbardi a Roma net Secoli XV., XVI. &' XVII. Hoepli: Milano,
1881, pp. 53, 54, and 338-9) quotes records from the Archives in
Rome of two Francesco Tizzoni of Caravaggio, architects and cabinet-
makers, residing in Rome about 1547-56, whose shop was near the church
of S. Ambrogio. The younger of these, on November 28th, 1548,
erected scaffolding for Daniele da Volterra in the Sala del Re of Castel
S. Angelo.
^ See Appendix No. 2.
6 GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI
Apart from conjecture and whatever inference
may be drawn from these incidents, the fact re-
mains, that the name under which he was generally
known throughout his life was Bazzi. Of his
nickname we shall speak later at present let us
confine our endeavours to elucidating the remain-
ing points involved in our first sentence.
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi's birthplace was un-
doubtedly Vercelli, in Piedmont, as Vasari rightly
states. The reasons adduced below will, we have
no doubt, set this point beyond the pale of conten-
tion. The artist, however, having come to Siena
at the age of twenty-three or thereabouts, having
married there, having made that town his home,
having done most of his best work there and in the
immediate neighbourhood, for the greater honour
and glory of Siena, and lastly, having died there,
the patriotic people of that city wished to claim
him as one of her sons by birth as well as by
adoption. In spite of the denial of authors of such
eminence as Tizio,^ Giovio,^ Armenini,^ Landi,^ and
^ Sigismondo Tizio, Historiaruin Senensium, MS., Biblioteca Comu-
nale, Siena, vol. vii. p. 460. ^^Johannis Antonii Vercellensis.'^
^ Paolo Giovio, in his short Vita o Elogio di Raffaello de Urbino,
which is to be found in his Fragmentum Triw7i Dialogorum, published
by Tiraboschi (Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. vii. part iv.
p. 1723: Modena, 1792, in-4) says : *^ Sodoitias Vercellensis praepostero,
instabilique iudicio usque ad insaniae affedationem Sefiarum urbe notis-
siinus, quum itnpetuosum aniitium ad artem revocat admiranda perfecit
et adeo concitata manu, ut nihilo secius, quod mirum est, neminem eo
prudentius, et tranquilliiis pinxisse appareat"
^ Giovanni Battista Armenini da Faenza, Dei Veri Precetti della
Fittura, lib. i. cap. iii. Ravenna : Tebaldini, 1587.
* Alfonso Landi, Racconto di Fitture, di Statue e d^altre Opere Eccel-
lenti, che si ritrovano nl TempiJ e negli altri Luoghi Fubblici della Cittd,
di Siena con i Noini Cognomi e Fatrie degV Artefici d' esse per quanto
pero s'e potuto trovare. 1655. "^^^ MSS. Biblioteca Comunale, Siena.
VERGELLE 7
finally of Padre della Valle,^ several Sienese writers
of lives of their celebrated citizens have insisted
upon arguing that Vergelle, a tiny hamlet in the
''Senese^'di few miles from Torrenieri, was his actual
birthplace. Romagnoli in his MS.^ even goes so
far as to identify the landscape in the so-called
Portrait of Sodoma in the Uffizi, Florence (said
to have been painted by himself), as a view of
the village of Vergelle, including the Casa Savini,
called // Pozzo, in which house he states that our
painter was born.^ Further misapprehension, too,
has been created by a footnote in the Siena edition
of Borghini's II Rtposo,^ which avers that Giovann-
antonio's baptismal certificate exists in the
Episcopal Archives of the city of Pienza. Padre
della Valle, in his Lett ere Sanesi, and Romagnoli
in his MS. History above mentioned, spent much
^ Padre Guglielmo della Valle, Lettere Sanesi: Roma, 1736, tomo iii.
p. 238 ^ seg.
^ Ettore Romagnoli, Biographia Cronologica de Bellartisti Senesi dal
Secolo XII. a tutto il XVIII. MS. Biblioteca Comunale, Siena, vol. v.
PP- 519746.
^ By the courtesy of Sig. Ing. G. Mori, the present owner, the author
was enabled to visit Vergelle on December 12th, 1898. The founda-
tions of, and a well belonging to a house, traditionally called ^^11 Fozzo,"
are certainly still to be seen there.
* Raffaello Borghini, II Riposo, vol. iii. p. 37. Siena: Pazzini, 1787.
'^ NelV Archivio Vescovile della Citta di Pienza nello stato di Siena, in un
libro dei Battezzali della Cura di Vergelle, esiste la Fede del Battesimo
di Giovannantonio Soddoma " (sic). It was in this edition of Borghini's
work that the note first appears, from whence it was copied in the
subsequent editions. The various editions of his work are as follows :
Firenze: Marescotti, 1582, 1584; P'irenze : Moucke, 1730; Firenze:
Nestenus, 1738; Siena: Pazzini, 1787; Milano, 1807; Reggio :
Fracadori, 1827.
It may be observed that Borghini in his text gives our artist no
patronymic at all, simply designating him as Giovannantonio da Vergelle,
villa distante da Siena 15 miglia, detto il Soddoma.
8 GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI
time and patience arguing the probability or other-
wise of this statement ; but the discoveries at
Vercelli prove the utter falsity of Borghini's as-
severations, and establish a fact that should have
been unmistakable. The evidence afforded by
the painter's own compositions, in which the
Lombard influence of his early years are, as
Vasari points out, so clearly traceable, should
have sufficed without the corroboration of original
documents.
The third point at issue has still to be dealt
with i.e., the date of his birth. Padre della Valle,
agreeing with the opinion of Baldinucci^ before
him, argues that the event occurred in 1479 ; while
Milanesi, writing in 1856, would at first have placed
it as far back as 1474,^ but corrects his view in a
note to Vasari's Life of Bazzi? Vasari confuses
us still further by stating that Bazzi died in 1554,
aged seventy-five, whereas we know from a letter^
from Alessandro Buoninsegni to his brother Ber-
nardino, Sienese Ambassador to the Court of
Naples, that the demise actually took place during
the night of February 14th- 15th, 1549. The
fruits of Padre Bruzza's researches enable us to
ascertain the real date with a greater approach to
accuracy.
In the first place, we know that Giacomo Bazzi,
^ Filippo Baldinucci, Fiorentino, Notizie dei Prqfessori del Disegno.
Torino, 1770. Book vi. p. 500, note.
^ Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la Storia dell' Arte Senese. Siena,
1856. Tom. iii. p. 182.
^ Vasari, Ojt>. cit., p. 399, note 4.
* Archivio di Stato di Siena. Lettere di Ser Alessaftdro Buoninsegni
a Bernardino suo fratello (now filed among Lettere agli Ambasciatori di
particolari persone 1547-8. Files 2447-9).
GIACOMO DE* BAZZI g
the father of our hero, was the son of one Antonio
de Bazis/ whose death must have occurred prior
to the year 1494. Whether, having completed his
apprenticeship in Biandrate,Giacomocame straight
from thence to Vercelli or not, we can but guess.
In any case we know that on January 26th, 1475,
by agreement with one Lorenzo Furione, he leased
a shop with dwelling-rooms attached, in the parish
of S. Michele, at Vercelli.^ We gather furthermore
although the marriage contract is no longer to be
found, that he married in 1476 Angelina da Per-
gamo (or Bergamo), and had by her three children,
Giovanni Antonio, Niccold, and Amedea. Herr
Jansen, in his picturesque study of the life of our
artist,^ argues but without giving valid grounds
for his opinion that Giovanni Antonio was the
younger of the two sons. Dr. Frizzoni,* with more
reason, concludes that, as in his father's Will,^
dated August 13th, 1497, Giovanni Antonio is
mentioned y^r^/, he probably was the eldest child.
This argument is likewise supported by two Deeds
of Transfer and Sale, dated January 31st, 1502,
and August 3rd, 1503, respectively. From the
^ Archivio Civico di Vercelli. Rogito di Enrico de Balbis, Not. 9,
fol. 61, and Prot. 3, fol. 2. Bruzza, Op. cit., p. 37. See Appendix
No. I, Pedigree of the Family of Bazzi.
2 Archivio detto, 26 Gennaio, 1475. Rogito di Guidetio de Pelli-
pariis, Not. 4, fol. 334.
' Albert Jansen, Leben und Werke des Malers Giovanni Antonio Bazzi
von Vercelli genannt Sodoma. Als Beitrag zur Geschichte der Italien-
ischen Renaissance, zum ersten Male beschrieben. Stuttgart: Ebner &
Seubert, 1870.
* Gustavo Frizzoni, U Arte Italiana del Rinascimento. Giovanni
Antonio de^ Bazzi detto il Sodoma. Milano : Fratelli Dumolard, 1891.
* Archivio detto, 13 Agosto, 1497. Rogito di Enrico de Balbis,
Prot. 4, fol. 231. See Appendix No. 3.
lo GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI
former^ we learn that, at the time of the execution
of the instrument, all three children were under
twenty-five years of age the period fixed by their
father's Will for their minority their mother being
therein described as tutrix and curatrix of their
persons and estates. The latter,^ however, which
deals with Niccol6 alone, tells us that he had
attained his majority at the date of its execution.
We may not unreasonably presume from this, that
Giovanni Antonio had reached the age of twenty-
five some time between these two dates, and can
therefore fix his birth as having occurred in 1477.^
Having thus explained in detail the issues raised
by our first sentence, and before proceeding with
the life of the artist, let us deal as briefly as may
be with the facts that can be ascertained concerning
his evil-sounding sobriquet.
It would be idle to deny the immense debt of
gratitude that the modern world owes to the labours
of Giorgio Vasari, painter, historian and critic.
His pages teem with information of the utmost
value. But it should be in these days super-
^ Archivio detto, 31 Gennaio, 1502. Rogito di Enrico de Balbis,
B. 4, Not. 3, fol. 146-8, where Angelina Bazzi is described as: ^^ tutrix
et curatrix ac tutorio et curatorio nomine Nichole, Joanne Antoni et
Amedee, filiorum ipsius Angeline et dicti quondam magri Jacobi^^ ecc. See
post, p. 54, note I.
2 Archivio detto, 3 Agosto, 1503. Rogito di Guglielmo de Lonate,
L. 6, Not. 29, fol. III. " 1503. 3 Augustiin vicinia Beate Marie Majoris
et in domo habitat, infrarscr. venditor presentibus . . . ibique Nicola fq.
Magri Jacobi de baziis et Caterina ejus uxor cum consensu dicti Nicole ejus
mariti presentis . . . faciunt venditionem, etc." Cf. Colonello Cesare
Faccio. Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (il Sodoma). Pittore Vercellese del
secolo XVI. Gallardi e Ugo. Vercelli, 1902, p. 221.
^ Niccolb may then perhaps have been a year younger i.e., born in
1478.
VASARI'S METHODS ii
fluous to point out how completely the charm of
these volumes has blinded many of his readers to
his obvious errors and wilful misrepresentations of
fact. The list of statements recorded by him re-
garding the private lives of artists, that one by
one have been disproved absolutely, is a very long
one, and his gratuitous insinuations are even more
profuse. If a painter or sculptor happens to be a
friend of the author, or comes up to his artistic
standard, at once everything unpleasant in his life
and character is nicely slurred over. But woe
betide the unlucky wight who may be set down
in Messer Giorgio's bad books ! For centuries,
nevertheless, the quaint scraps of gossip, agreeable
or ill-natured as they may chance to be, have
caught the fancy and embedded themselves in
the memory of the dilettante and the sentimental
journalist, instead of the more serious and im-
portant portions of an artist's history : the names,
provenance, and so forth, of his work. Many a
craftsman's fame has thus sunk under the waves
of obloquy. Seduced by the glamour of Vasari's
picturesque style, few have taken the trouble to
sift dubious innuendoes, or to trace the sources of
information whence his facts were drawn. State-
ments in his pages too often gain their force from
his mode of expression, or from their place often
totally unwarranted by actual fact in the sequence
of his narrative. Phrases, capable of double
interpretation taken by themselves, are thrust in
without explanation or comment beside other
sets of definite and undoubted incidents ; thereby
leading the reader to most erroneous conclusions.
12 GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI
There is no question but that the evil memory
overshadowing Bazzi's life and name is mainly
due to the animus shown towards him by Vasari :
so cleverly masked, so deftly suggested, as to leave
an impression far more damaging than the most
virulent abuse. Few except the historians and
art critics of our day have probably ever heard of
the other really more weighty accusations against
him, of which we shall have occasion to speak later
on. We would desire, however, to lay some stress
here upon one or two circumstances which, although
they turn the scale but little in favour of this
particular artist, yet tell against an unquestioning
belief in the veracity of his traducer's insinuations.
To no student of Renaissance History can it be
a matter of surprise to find himself brought con-
stantly face to face with prominent characters of
extremely depraved temperament. Immorality in
its most revolting forms not merely existed, but
W2is far from uncommon in every rank of life, and
conspicuously so amongst the most distinguished
figures of the period. Although both Ecclesiastical
and Civil Law promulgated severest penalties
against offenders, their terrors were unheeded. Not
only craftsmen, literary or artistic, but Popes and
Princes, great soldiers and eminent statesmen, were
guilty of the most shameless actions whenever lust
or passion held unbridled sway. The most notice-
able point, however, is not that such grave moral
backslidings occurred, but that the attitude of mind,
of so many of the most pious and law-abiding, was
in practice so mildly and leniently disposed towards
them. Ladies of the highest rank and most stainless
THEIR MISCHIEVOUS RESULTS 13
reputation appear to have remained quite unmoved,
though brought into close contact in almost every
relation of life with turpitude such as at the present
day is scarcely even hinted at. Contemporary
chronicles abound with gossip of the most scan-
dalous kind, and autobiographers openly boast of
their sins, without any idea, apparently, that the
reader would show more than ordinary interest ;
certainly without any expectation of administering
a shock provoking disapproval. Now, Messer
Giorgio was a true representative of his time, and
we cannot suppose him to have been really more
squeamish than his contemporaries. Yet his Life
of Sodoma is written as though he had the gift of
prophecy and could have foreseen the verdict of
posterity : the nicer judgment of a later epoch ; or
even the mental attitude of that very numerous
class whose intellect seems powerless to distinguish
truth from fiction in the vagaries of the artistic
temperament, a class lacking in what we would
call the sense of historical perspective; to whom
''Roma locuta est, causa finita est'' in respect of
Vasari's authority is an all-sufficient reason for
abhorrence.
It is doubtful whether in his own day this
species of condemnation could have had the strong
penal or degrading force that it would bear at the
present time ; and in judging our artist as an
individual, we should in common fairness start
with our minds free from any bias formed by
our Vasarian studies. We can, indeed, sympathize
with Messer Giorgio on artistic grounds. To the
industrious student, brought up in almost slavish
14 GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI
reverence for the correctness and formalism of the
rules and regulations of classic Art, dear to the soul
of Michelangelo's immediate followers, the wild,
careless, erratic genius of Bazzi, the inequalities of
his work, which are the despair even of his warmest
admirers, must have been a standing cause of
vexation and anger. Nevertheless no reasonable
indignation can justify the cruelty of the attack
outside the realm of Art. We must, therefore,
look round, and endeavour to discover a just cause :
a cause not far to seek if we trace to their sources
the facts and information on which our gossip
based his Memoir. It should be noticed that this
particular ''Life'' was not included in the first
edition of Lives of the Painters (1550), but was
reserved for publication until 1568, nineteen years
after the artisfs death} Both Bazzi's children,
and presumably his wife also, were then dead.
His favourite pupil and son-in-law had married
again, and was living in Lucca,^ a martyr to the
gout, of which he died in June 1570.^ Of his
granddaughters : one, Parsenia, was the wife of
Scipione Rinaldi, and the other, Beatrice, had
become a nun. Moreover, Bazzi had left behind
him no school of devoted pupils ; so that it was
unlikely that any one would arise to confute false
statements and scandalous suggestions.
The sources of Vasari's information were un-
questionably tainted, inasmuch as they sprang
^ We have observed above (p. 8) that, according to Vasari, Bazzi
lived until 1554 ; a statement which shows plainly how little trouble the
biographer must have taken to verify his facts.
2 Vasari, Op. cit., p. 399, " si sta oggi in Lucca," etc.
' Vasari, Op. cit., Commentary, p. 415.
THE SOURCES OF HIS INFORMATION i5
from Domenico del Pace (Beccafumi), the whilom
pupil, afterwards the rival and bitter enemy of Bazzi ;
and from Giuliano Morelli/ the goldsmith, whose
granddaughter, Batista, was, by her marriages, the
mother of two younger competitors for public
favour : Francesco Vanni and Ventura Salimbeni.
Nothing can be more strongly marked than the
manner in which Vasari contrasts the work of
Del Pace with that of Bazzi to the detriment of
the latter. No doubt the plodding draughtsman,
who worked along the correct lines so dear to the
heart of the Aretine, must have appealed to his
artistic perceptions with greater power than the
erratic genius, who declined to be bound by any
rule, and defied all recognised canons. Once we
grasp this fact, we can better understand Vasari's
standpoint, and reckon the bitterness of his con-
clusions at their just value. Several of his points
of view will come before us in the course of this
essay ; but two at least must be especially noted
here with reference to the name Sodoma.
This name he professes to explain, in the most
1 Giuliano di Niccolo Morelli, who bore the nickname ofBarba, seems
to have been the friend of several eminent artists, and both connoisseur
and craftsman himself. He is mentioned by Vasari (vol. i. p. 644) as
possessing the MS. of Cennino Cennini's Trattato della Pittura, and
(vol. iv. p. 608, vol. V. p. 654) as extremely friendly with Baldassare
Peruzzi and Beccafumi. He married Savina di Francesco, by whom he
had a daughter, Maddalena, who in her turn married Vittorio Focari,
becoming by him the mother of the Batista mentioned in the text. In
1537 he made certain silver vases for the Consistoro, and a year after had a
lawsuit with that body over a metal figure of S. Paul. On December 29th,
1547, he valued {Mil. Doc. cit., vol. iii. p. 175) some figures in stucco,
made by Riccio for the Compagnia di S. Giovanni della Morte. He
made his Will in 1570, in which year he seems to have died. He is
referred to in the letter from Niccolo Trappolini to Alessandro Corvini
quoted in Appendix No. 32.
i6 GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI
damaging sentence in his entire narrative, occurring
as it does almost at the outset. Oddly enough,
the phrase appears in close sequence to some of
the highest praise that the spiteful biographer
could have passed upon his subject. A statement
intended, be it observed, as a depreciation, but
which gives us thus early the keynote to Bazzi's
genuine artistic sense viz., that he neglected all
that, according to Vasari, he should have studied,
in order to make copies and sketches frorn the
work of Giacomo delta Querela} He continues :
*' Era oltre cio uomo allegro, licenzioso, e teneva
altrui in piacere e spasso con vivere poco onesta-
mente : nel che fare, pero che aveva sempre attorno
fanciulli e giovani sbarbati, i quali amava fuor di
modo, si acquisto il sopranome di Soddoma ; del
quale non che si prendesse noia o sdegno, se ne
gloriava, facendo sopra esso stanze e capitoli, e
cantandogli in sul liuto assai commodamente."^
To any one who has studied the life of so great
an artist as Leonardo da Vinci, or the Sonnets of
Michelangelo, which so plainly speak for them-
selves, a sentence such as this loses practically all
value. No one in Art-History was perhaps so
prone to seek the companionship, both for pupils
and models, of beardless youths, as the amiable
and lovable Leonardo ; whilst Michelangelo with
his own lips suggests views and opinions to which
we can find no parallel in any authentic record of
^ Vasari, Op. cit., vol. vi. p. 380. "Fu solamente in disegnare le
cose di Jacopo dalla Fonte, che erano in pregio, e poco altro."
2 Vasari, Op. cit., vol. vi., p. 380. An equally bitter attack, though
differently worded, occurs in the Life of Beccafumi, where Vasari {Op. cit.^
vol. V. p. 635) contrasts the characters of the two men.
THE "PALIO" OF S. BARNABAS 17
Bazzi's life. Yet theywere both fortunate enough to
escape the rancour of Vasari, that self-elected censor
of morals. We may notice that the biographer