In one of the early scenes of the life of St Benedict Sodoma depicts himself as a well-dressed, white-gloved man, accompanied by two badgers. Giorgio Vasari tells us that Sodoma kept a menagerie of strange animals 'so that his home resembled a veritable Noah's ark.'
"He loved to fill his house with all manner of curious animals; badgers, squirrels, apes, catamounts, dwarf asses, Barbary racehorses, Elba ponies, jackdaws, bantams, turtle-doves ... so that his house resembled a veritable Noah's ark." [Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the artists]
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