to have received but little pay--Vasari says, only the expenses
of some colour-grinders who assisted him; but from the books of the
convent it appears that 241 ducats, or something over 60_l._ of our
money, were disbursed to him.

Sodoma was so singular a fellow, even in that age of piquant
personalities, that it may be worth while to translate a fragment of
Vasari's gossip about him. We must, however, bear in mind that, for some
unknown reason, the Aretine historian bore a rancorous grudge against
this Lombard, whose splendid gifts and great achievements he did all he
could by writing to depreciate. "He was fond," says Vasari, "of keeping
in his house all sorts of strange animals: badgers, squirrels, monkeys,
cat-a-mountains, dwarf-donkeys, horses, racers, little Elba ponies,
jackdaws, bantams, doves of India, and other creatures of this kind, as
many as he could lay his hands on. Over and above these beasts, he had a
raven, which had learned so well from him to talk, that it could imitate
its master's voice, especially in answering the door when some one
knocked, and this it did so cleverly that people took it for
Giovannantonio himself, as all the folk of Siena know quite well. In
like manner, his other pets were so much at home with him that they
never left his house, but played the strangest tricks and maddest pranks
imaginable, so that his house was like nothing more than a Noah's Ark."
He was a bold rider, it seems; for with one of his racers, ridden by
himself, he bore away the prize in that wild horse-race they run upon
the Piazza at Siena. For the rest, "he attired himself in pompous
clothes, wearing doublets of brocade, cloaks trimmed with gold lace,
gorgeous caps, neck-chains, and other vanities of a like description,
fit for buffoons and mountebanks." In one of the frescoes of Monte
Oliveto, Sodoma painted his own portrait, with some of his curious pets
around him. He there appears as a young man with large and decidedly
handsome features, a great shock of dark curled hair escaping from a
yellow cap, and flowing down over a rich mantle which drapes his
shoulders. If we may trust Vasari, he showed his curious humours freely
to the monks. "Nobody could describe the amusement he furnished to those
good fathers, who christened him Mattaccio (the big madman), or the
insane tricks he played there."

In spite of Vasari's malevolence, the portrait he has given us of Bazzi
has so far nothing unpleasant about it. Th