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St. Sebastian (1525). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi) (1477-1549) A prolific painter who dominated the art scene of early sixteenth-century Siena, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (better known as Il Sodoma) produced images with sentimental appeal. Born in 1477, the son of a shoemaker, Bazzi was apprenticed to a local painter in the north Italian town of Vercelli for much of the 1490s but he had moved to Siena by 1502. A husband and father of two children, he is nevertheless regarded anachronistically by some as a proud, “outspoken” homosexual who was surrounded by, in James Saslow’s words, “an entourage of foppish boys.” This picture derives from one source, the biography published by Giorgio Vasari in 1568. Bazzi is presented there as an eccentric, self-indulgent, overdressed and amusing collector of animals.