Vasari’s Biography of Bazzi as ‘Soddoma’: Art History and Literary Analysis

Abstract

In his famous Lives (second edition, 1568), Renaissance artist Giorgio Vasari addressed the painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi as ‘Soddoma’ (implying sodomite) and described him as mad, eccentric, and bestial. For the next 450 years, the majority of art historians have accepted Vasari’s biography as factual, and have viewed Bazzi’s art as reflecting his immoral character. This article approaches Vasari’s text not as a record of historical events, but as a work of prose, applying the methodology of literary analysis to understand how Vasari intentionally manipulates his reader’s response. Vasari’s infrequent praise of Bazzi also emerges from a close reading of the text, with implications suggested for a reconsideration of Bazzi’s standing as an artist of significance. A selection of critical writings from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries will be analysed for the manner in which they endorse or reject Vasari’s language.