A Document for the Twenty-Years-Old Sodoma in Rome

Abstract

Bridging a gap spanning from Sodoma’s apprenticeship in his native Piedmont to his arrival in Siena, a previously unpublished notarial act reveals that the young painter was in Rome in 1497, thus confirming what the most experienced critics had already argued on the basis of style. The person who hosted the Vercelli painter in his home on this occasion (present at the deed as a witness) was Battista Tomarozzi, whose life can be better known through some new documents and a short biography presented here for the first time. Tomarozzi had ties with the major families of the city, the Roman Curia, and, at least in his youth, the Kingdom of Naples. He was a man of culture, too: he studied under two humanists, and collected antique objects that possibly interested Sodoma.