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] 
             
               
               |