Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called Sodoma

This rediscovered canvas is an early work by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called Sodoma, the preeminent Sienese artist in the early years of the sixteenth century. Painted between 1505 and 1508, this mythological scene belongs to a group of small canvases commissioned by Sigismondo Chigi (1479-1528) that formed a decorative ceiling ensemble for his Palazzo Chigi, Siena.¹

At the beginning of the Cinquecento, all’antica decorations and antique models were at the height of fashion, inspiring refined Sienese patrons to redecorate according to contemporary taste. As recorded in Fabio Chigi’s Commentarii of 1618, we know that Sigismondo renovated select rooms of his Bocca del Casato palace, likely to commemorate his 1507 wedding to Sulpicia Petruccia, daughter of Pandolfo Petrucci. Two such rooms featured decorative schemes by Sodoma: one had a coffered ceiling inset with a series of small mythological paintings, while the other featured panels (now-lost) depicting the exploits of Julius Caesar.² According to an early nineteenth-century source, Sodoma executed no fewer than thirty mythological canvases, including the present painting, for the palace. Unlike earlier domestic decorative arrangements, these small-scale canvas paintings would have installed directly within the ceiling's wooden framework, perhaps evoking the arrangement on the ceiling of the Piccolomini Library in the Siena

Cathedral.³

The present work is one of only six canvases from the original group that survives. In addition to the present painting, these include three canvases in the Worcester Art Museum: Apollo and Daphne, Fall of Phaeton, and Acis and Galatea.⁴ A fourth canvas, today in a private collection, depicts Mars and Venus Trapped by Vulcan.⁵ The fifth canvas of Diana and Actaeon likewise remains in private hands in Milan.⁶ Characteristic of the invention of Sodoma’s early work, these canvases are painted in a highly abbreviated, sketch-like manner. Set within open, simplified landscapes, the compositions possess stylistic consistency in the warm tonality, soft modelling of figures, and pale palette with an occasional touch of red.

In this painting, Sodoma depicts the mythological scene of an imperiled Europa, daughter of King Agenor of Tyre, abducted by Jupiter disguised as a bull who carries her off to sea. Particularly notable is Sodoma’s inclusion of the female figures witnessing the abduction from the shore at left. According to Roberto Bartalini, their presence suggests that Sodoma’s literary source was not Ovid’s Latin text but instead Ovidio methamorphoseos vulgare written by Giovanni Buonsignori from 1375 to 1377 and published in Venice in 1497.⁷ Buonsignori’s text itself was a vulgarization based on the explanatory paraphrase and allegories written in 1322 and 1323 by Giovanni del Virgilio, a correspondent of Dante and Professor at the "Studium" of Bologna. Whereas Ovid’s Metamorphosis makes no mention of Europa’s companions, Giovanni Buonsignori's version refers to the vulgarization makes reference to the handmaids, to whom Europa calls begging for rescue. The other known related canvases from the ceiling of the Palazzo Chigi are similarly based upon the same textual source.

We are grateful to Professor Roberto Bartalini, Professor Alessandro Angelini, and Dr. Keith Christiansen for endorsing the attribution to Sodoma and for their assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.

¹ For a brief explanation of the basis for this chronology, see P. Zambrano, "A New Scene by Sodoma from the Ceiling of Palazzo Chigi at Casato di Sotto, Siena," in Burlington Magazine 136, no. 1098 (September 1994), p. 611. For a discussion on the ceiling's Ovidian themes, see R. Bartalini, “Sodoma a Palazzo Chigi” in Scritti per l’Istituto Germanico di Storia dell’Arte di Firenze, Firenze 1997, pp. 233-238.

² Fabio Chigi (1599-1667), later Pope Alexander VII, was a direct descendent of Sigismodo.

³ A comparison made in Zambrano 1994, p. 611.

⁴ Inv. no. 1925.120, 56.4 by 32.1 cm; inv. no. 1925.121, 64.1 by 56.8 cm.; inv. no. 1925.122, 56.4 by 32.1 cm.

⁵ Private collection, 30.5 by 68.7 cm, formerly Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, sold Sotheby's London, 6 July 1994, lot 35.

⁶ Rediscovered by Sylvie Beguin and first published in Zambrano 1994. Private collection, Milan, 57.2 by 28.9 cm.

⁷ For a detailed discussion of the relationship between the paintings and the source text, see R. Bartalini, "Sodoma, il soffitto di Palazzo Chigi e i volgarizzamenti di Ovidio," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Sylvie Béguin, Napoli 2001, pp. 157-165.