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

84 VINCENZO FOPPA
to the ordinary class of treatment. Here the Child stands sideways upon the
parapet, and looks out of the picture over his right shoulder, grasping his
Mother's mantle with his right hand.^ From many indications the Castello
picture is evidently an early work ; at the same time the care and diligence
bestowed upon the technique and modelling are most remarkable and
render it probable that it must have been produced for a donor of great
importance, and involuntarily our thoughts turn to that Madonna which
Francesco Sforza refers to in the letter in which he summons Vincenzo
hurriedly to Milan in March, 1463 (Doc. No. 9), a date which would be
in complete accordance with the aspect of the picture. Unfortunately, however,
we have not the slightest clue to its earlier history. All that we know
is, that it was formerly in the Museo Civico, whither it came with other
pictures of the Guasconi bequest," and eventually with all the collections in
this museum it was removed to the Castello.
Akin to the Virgin of the Castello in point of date and sculpturesque
tendencies, though far inferior to it in every particular, is the Madonna and
Child of the Berlin Gallery, a picture now in such a terrible state of decay
that no just estimate of it is possible. In the face and hair the colour has
scaled off in patches, leaving the panel bare,^ the flesh tones and the colours
of the
drapery have greatly deteriorated, owing to the action of damp or the
neglect to which this painting must have been subjected, it having probably
shared the fate of many of the Solly pictures,
to which collection this Madonna
formerly belonged ;
for more than fifty years after their purchase by the
Prussian Government they were stacked in lumber rooms, piled one on the
other, and exposed to every kind of injury and indignity.^ The Madonna is
undoubtedly Foppa's in type and character, and the structural qualities of the
figure seated upon the wooden throne with the Child firmly planted upon her
knee are admirably understood ; in this respect Vincenzo has solved a difficulty,
which was not always easily surmounted even by the greatest masters at this
date, with complete success. In the treatment of the Child it cannot be denied
that the qualities which as a rule render his works so attractive—charm and
earnestness of expression, grace of movement, dignity and impressiveness of
pose—are absent from this panel ; the painter here has striven after character
alone, and has drawn the figure of the Child with all the skill and knowledge
at his command, but with no regard for beauty of type or expression, for the
features are coarse, unpleasing, and wholly uninspired, and the forms are heavy
1 An inferior copy of the Castello picture is in the Malaspina Gallery at Pavia.
^ In 1863 (see Perseveranza, November 17, 1863).
' Our illustration is from a photograph by Hanfstaengl, taken some years ago, in
which the present deplorable state of the picture is
not so apparent.
^ See /a/irbuc/i d. K. Preussischen Kunstsamtnluiigeu, VII, p. 238.