Addendum: Roxana or Not?

Abstract

In a previous note in this journal, I pointed to a remarkable gap in the reception history of the Villa Farnesina, Rome: Sodoma’s Nuptials of Roxana and Alexander the Great, commissioned for Agostino Chigi’s state bedroom in 1518 to 1519, remained off-limits for visiting artists and never appeared in drawings or printed guides. Vasari described it so inaccurately that I suggested he relied on a secondhand account, and Gaspare Celio’s 1638 guide to Roman art merely notes that “in the Bedrooms there are stories by Iacomo Sodoma of Siena and others.” Appreciation of Sodoma’s now-canonical fresco had to wait until the nineteenth century, when Michelangelo Prunetti declared it (albeit briefly) “veramente poetica, e sublime.” Richard Förster made a thorough iconographical study of the Roxana episode and argued for