Nearly eighty years after the last major retrospective held in 1950 in Vercelli and Siena, the Accorsi-Ometto Foundation presents an important exhibition dedicated to Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Sodoma.

The exhibition, curated by Serena D’Italia, Luca Mana and Vittorio Natale, with the scientific committee composed of Roberto Bartalini, Francesco Frangi and Edoardo Villata, presents for the first time to the public the early production of the painter, in which emerges a frenetic elaboration of the different experiences matured by the artist that led him to develop a completely personal language.

From Giovanni Martino Spanzotti's workshop, to the frescoes in Sant’Anna in Camprena (1503-1504) and in the cloister of Monteoliveto (1505-1508), in Siena, to the extraordinary stays in Rome, supported by the commission of Agostino Chigi, Sodoma undertakes a journey that the exhibition ideally attempts to reconstruct.

EXHIBITION PATH

The seven sections that make up the path feature over fifty works, some of which are unpublished or never exhibited before.

It starts with the Ecce Homo (Christ Mocked) from 1510 which highlights the important outcomes achieved by the artist during his formative journey, and continues with the original apprenticeship contract with Giovanni Martino Spanzotti, in whose workshop the painter was trained. It then proceeds with the works of the Vercelli and Casale artists known by Sodoma himself and with the activity of Spanzotti and some artists who worked alongside the master in his workshop, like the young Defendente Ferrari. Here Sodoma is represented by a recent attributive discovery: the Sacra Famiglia with Saint John the Baptist and an angel. For the Leonardesque Milan there are The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian from the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, whose attribution can be verified in person, and an extraordinary Lamentation over the Dead Christ from around 1503.

The Renaissance in central Italy is documented by two works by Pinturicchio and by two rare Pietà by Sodoma that attest to his early stylistic maturity.

To confirm the intensity of exchanges between Piedmont and central Italy, from the late 1400s to the early 1500s, important works by Macrino d’Alba, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Eusebio Ferrari, and Gerolamo Giovenone are exhibited.

In the last section, early works by Sodoma (such as the Allegory of Heavenly Love from the Chigi Saracini Collection in Siena and the Sacra Famiglia with Saint John the Baptist and an angel from the National Gallery of the same city) are compared with some masterpieces from the artist's full maturity: the Sacra Famiglia with Saint John the Baptist and an angel from the Borgogna Museum in Vercelli and the Death of Lucretia from the Sabauda Gallery in Turin.

The path concludes with a video illustrating the fresco cycles of San Francesco in Subiaco, Sant’Anna in Camprena, and the cloister of Monteoliveto, fundamental works for the understanding of this extraordinary artist. 

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OPENING HOURS

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