Dali House

When Rolf Gross last visited Dali House in February, he had some wonderful things to reveal about Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. The man does not sit idly. His latest contribution to art history (and, not incidentally, Google Earth) is a thorough survey of the great fresco painters of Tuscany.

You can view the project at Rolf’s website here or, if you have the free Google Earth program, download the tour here and enjoy a virtual hike around the Renaissance chapels of northern Italy.

The frescoes, painted between 1200 and 1600 and many of them fully restored in recent years, are displayed along with biographies of the artists, from champions of the stature of Piero della Francesca to the little-known Jacopo Potormo.

Cimabue is featured, Giotto del Bondone, Gozzoli and, in Florence — “the treasure house of Tuscany” — you can get better acquainted with Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Luca Signorelli and a man called Il Sodoma.

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477-1549) evidently didn’t mind people calling him The Sodomite at all, and even exulted in the nickname in poetry and song — and used it as his signature.

He was married with children but, according to one detractor at least, “he had always boys and beardless youths about him of whom he was inordinately fond”. And his house was full of strange animals, too. So there!

Rolf Gross offers a look at Il Sodoma’s 1508 fresco cycle at the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, “his major work”, depicting scenes from the life of St Benedict.