Siena, after a long period of inactivity, received a fresh impulse at the same time as Florence.  Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il Sodoma, was born at Vercelli about 1477.  He studied in his youth under Lionardo da Vinci, training his own exquisite sense of natural beauty in that scientific school.  From Milan, after a certain interval of time, he removed to Rome, where he became a friend and follower of Raphael.  These double influences determined a style that never lost its own originality.  With what delicacy and naivete, almost like a second Luini, but with more of humour and sensuousness, he approached historic themes, may be seen in his frescoes at Monte Oliveto.[404] They were executed before his Roman visit, and show the facility of a most graceful improvisatore.  One painting representing the “Temptation of Monks by Dancing Women” carries the melody of fluent lines and the seduction of fair girlish faces into a region of pure poetry.  These frescoes are superior to Sodoma’s work in the Farnesina.  Impressed, as all artists were, by the monumental character of Borne, and fired by Raphael’s example, he tried to abandon his sketchy and idyllic style for one of greater majesty and fulness.  The delicious freshness of his earlier manner was sacrificed; but his best efforts to produce a grandiose composition ended in a confusion of individually beautiful but ill-assorted motives.  Like Luini, Sodoma was never successful in pictures requiring combination and arrangement.  He lacked some sense of symmetry and sought to achieve massiveness by crowding figures in a given space.  When we compare his group of “S.  Catherine Fainting under the Stigmata” with the medley of agitated forms that make up his picture of the same saint at Tuldo’s execution, we see plainly that he ought to have confined himself to the expression of very simple themes.[405] The former is incomparable for its sweetness; the latter is indistinct and wearying, in spite of many details that adorn it.  Gifted with an exquisite feeling for the beauty of the human body, Sodoma excelled himself when he was contented with a single figure.  His “S.  Sebastian,” notwithstanding its wan and faded colouring, is still the very best that has been painted.[406] Suffering, refined and spiritual, without contortion or spasm, could not be presented with more pathos in a form of more surpassing loveliness.  This is a truly demonic picture in the fascination it exercises and the memory it leaves upon the mind.  Part of its unanalysable charm may be due to the bold thought of combining the beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian sentiment of martyrdom.  Only the Renaissance could have produced a hybrid so successful, because so deeply felt.