Sodoma, Il, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477–1549)

Italian painter. Strongly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, he developed an ornate and graceful style. Much of his best work consists of frescoes on religious and mythological subjects in Siena and Rome, among the finest being The Life of St Catherine (1526, church of S Domenico, Siena).

Il Sodoma was born in the duchy of Savoy. He went first to Milan and then settled in Siena in 1501, where he completed a series of frescoes depicting the life of St Benedict begun by Luca Signorelli in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto (1505–08).

In 1508 he visited Rome, where he painted in the Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican, though Pope Julius II was dissatisfied with his work and replaced him with Raphael Sanzio. Also in Rome, Il Sodoma painted the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana (1512) in the Villa Farnesina. He did some work in Mantua, Volterra, Florence, and Pisa.