Giorgio Vasari

“ GIOVAN-ANTONIO RAZZI, OF VERCELLI, [1] CALLED SODONA,
SODONE, OR SOGDONA. [2]
[born 1474—died 1549.]
Had men the foresight to consider well their position when fortune offers to them the opportunity of making themselves rich, by procuring for them the favour of great men, and if in their youth they would labour to bring their merits and deserts into harmony with their good fortune, how marvellous would then be the effects that might be seen to result from their activity. But the contrary is known to be too often the case ”

“ But as they were found to be of no great merit, the Warden, who had designed to entrust other pictures for the same church to Giovan-Antonio, dismissed him, knowing well that men who do not study, having once arrived at old age, are liable to lose that certain something of good wherewith they had been endowed by Nature, and when that is lost, the manner remaining, with such facility of hand as may be left to them, is for the most part but little to be commended. ”

“ Having been affronted by a Spanish soldier, then on guard at one of the city gates, the painter, unable to cope with the numbers by whom the man was surrounded, fixed his eyes on him attentively, and then, returning home, made a portrait of the soldier’s face; this he took to the Spanish Prince, demanding satisfaction for the affront received, and the aggressor being readily discovered by means of the portrait, was punished accordingly, Giovan Antonio himself obtaining at the same time the favour of the Prince, as Armenini assures us he was told by an old man who had been the friend of Razzi. ”

“ In the first year of his marriage he became the father of a little girl, but his wife, being weary of the follies committed by this man, at length refused to live with him. Withdrawing herself wholly from her husband therefore, she supported her child by her labour, and on the interest of her dowry, [42] after having long borne with infinite patience the brutalities and absurdities of Giovan-Antonio, who was truly worthy of that name of Mattaccio, or Arch-fool, which was given to him, as we have said, by the fathers of Monte Oliveto. ”

“ Giovan-Antonio had a fancy for keeping all sorts of strange animals in his house, badgers, squirrels, apes, cat-a mountains, dwarf asses, horses and barbs to run races, magpies, dwarf chickens, tortoises, Indian doves, and other animals of similar kind, whatever he could get into his hands in short; he was always surrounded by children and young men, in whose society he took much pleasure ”

“ A picture of the Madonna, which Giovan-Antonio painted in oil for Messer Eneas Savini of the Costerella, presents further proof of what is here said, as does another on cloth, which he executed for Assuero Rettori, of San Martino, the subject of the last being the Roman Lucrezia, who inflicts on herself the mortal wound: [38] she is supported by her father and husband: this is a work wherein there is much grace in the attitudes, with infinite beauty in the heads. ”

“ That on the right side of the tabernacle exhibits the saint when she is receiving the Stigmata from Our Saviour Christ, who is seen in the air above, she lying fainting in the arms of two of the Sisterhood who support her. The Sienese painter Baldassare Petrucci, [33] examining this work, declared that he had never seen the figures of persons fainting depicted with more truth and perfection by any artist than by Giovan Antonio. ”

“ Leo X., I say, being created high Pontiff, II Mattaccio was suddenly raised to the very summit of delight, and the rather as he detested Julius, who had done him that scorn; wherefore, desiring to make his talents known to the new- Pontiff, he set himself to work, and executed a painting W'herein he depicted a nude figure of Lucretia stabbing herself with the poniard. And as fortune is favourable to fools and wall sometimes bring aid to thoughtless men, so GriovanAntonio succeeded in producing the most beautiful form of a woman that can be conceived, with a head that was breathing. ”

“ For, to say nothing of the figure of Our Lady, which is highly extolled, as are the first of the three Magi and certain of the horses, there is the head of a Shepherd, seen between two trees, which does truly appear to be alive. ”

“ It is true that Gaye, Carteggio inedito d’Artisti, cites an inscription in which Giovan-Antonio calls himself “of Siena” (Senensis) , but this may have reference to his right of citizenship, an honour which had been bestowed on him by the Sienese. Be this as it may, and whether he were Piedmontese or Sienese by birth, it is certain that by long residence, by adoption, and by affection, this master belongs to Siena. ↑ In the Life of Domenico Beccafumi, Vasari has declared Razzi to have been a good designer. ↑ For whose life see vol. i. of the present work. ”

“ Having then nothing more to do at Pisa, he left that city, repairing to Luca, and in San Ponziano, a monastery belonging to the monks of Monte Oliveto, he received a commission from the abbot, who was a person of his acquaintance, to paint a picture of Our Lady on a staircase which forms the ascent to the dormitory. That work being completed, Giovan-Antonio returned to Siena, weary, old, and poor ”

“ Orlandi, Abbecedario Piltoricc> has mistaken this Giomo, who died before he had given any evidence of his ability, for that Girolamo del Pacchia, who was capable of being the competitor of Razzi. ↑ Michel Angelo Anselmi of Siena, Rustico, an excellent painter of grottesche, and Lo Scalabrino, who, according to Lanzi, was “a man of genius and a poet,” are likewise enumerated among the disciples of this master. ↑ The Sienese, Signor Ettore Romagnoli, has discovered documents in his native city from which it would appear that Giovan Antonio Razzi died on the 14th of February, in the year 1549. ”

“ Vasari was, in short, offended by the negligent habits of Giovan-Antonio as an artist, and revolted by the evil repute which he had acquired as a man, and these things were without doubt suffered, in this one instance, to bias the judgment of the biographer. ↑ A sum of 490 florins. ↑ Bartolommeo Neroni, or Negroni, called Maestro Riccio the Sienese, was an architect as well as painter. His works have been engraved at Rome by Andrea Andreini of Mantua.— Bollari. ”