Vincenzo Foppa of Brescia, founder of the Lombard school, his life ...

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VINCENZO FOPPA
Pazzi Chapel. The clusters and garlands of fruit springing from vases
and often bound with fluttering ribbons, a motive continually introduced on
archivolts and pilasters, is one frequently met with in Florence ; but this motive
was not of Tuscan origin ; it was undoubtedly borrowed in the first instance from
antique bas-reliefs, and was adapted by the Florentines of the early fifteenth
century to their own use. Through this channel it may have penetrated to
North Italy, though it is equally probable that it was diffused there by the
direct study of Roman monuments, for Padua, Verona, Brescia, and other cities,
would have afforded ample opportunity for such study, and we know from Jacopo
Bellini's drawings that these subjects appealed to him in no small degree.'
In any case these decorative designs were enthusiastically adopted in North
Italy, and found expression in a great variety of forms, not only in marble
and terra-cotta, but also in frescoes, panel pictures, and even in miniature art.
The pyramid of fruit appears equally in the marble framework of the door
of the Medici Bank, in the stucco ornamentation of the pilasters in the
chapel, in the terra-cotta bells which the angels swing to and fro in the drum,
in the decorative details of one of the cortiles in the Certosa of Pavia, in
a drawing ascribed to Mantegna at Vienna, in a missal with paintings by
Cristoforo de Predis at the Madonna del Monte, Varese, and elsewhere. The
swags held by rings with pendent ribbons, sometimes separated from one
another by cherubs' heads,^ we meet with in the works of Michelozzo and of
many other Florentines, in countless examples of painting and sculpture
throughout North Italy as well as in illuminated MSS., while the great
wreath of fruit, tightly bound, of which we have a splendid example surrounding
the drum of the cupola in the Portinari Chapel, is constantly chosen
to ornament the ribs of a vaulted chapel or as the framework for painted
medallions. They were in fact the favourite decorative motives of the day,
and were greatly in vogue, more especially throughout North Italy. If the
general design and plan of the building was Florentine, the execution was
certainly in great part ^
Lombard ; but whoever the architect and other craftsmen
may have been, one thing is certain, that they were in closest relation and
1 See among other examples in the Paris sketch-book Giraudon, Nos. 725, 791, and
Ricci, op. ctt.y No. 50.
^ At Castiglione d' Olona, in the background of one of Masolino's frescoes in the
Baptistery and in the sculptures of the Chiesa della Villa, />»/// take the place of cherubs'
heads and sustain the garlands (see the reproduction in Meyer, I, p. 72).
^ The angels in the drum of the cupola, it may be noted, as pointed out by Monger!
{L'Arte in Milano, p. 63) at the time when the chapel was being restored, though
of terra-cotta, have no trace of the vitreous glaze distinctive of Florentine work, but their
draperies, where the colour was preserved, were found to be painted according to the
methods in vogue among Lombard artificers.