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

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VINCENZO FOPPA
he does not specify which of the two designs for it he has selected), but, with
the exception of this, he states, he has no intention of having any paintings
executed on the panelling of the chapel.^
As to the ceiling, his commands are
that it is to be adorned with a figure of the Eternal Father in the centre and
with figures of angels or cherubim relieved upon a blue ground with stars in
gold. He states further that after his interview with Foppa and his colleagues,
other painters had presented themselves who (with small sense of comradeship
towards their fellow-artists) had done their best to supplant Foppa and
his company and to obtain the commission for themselves by offering to do the
whole work for a lower sum than that named by their rivals. The Duke enjoined
Gadio to summon all these painters and to entrust the work to those
who would make the best terms from a financial point of view.
The best terms, it seems, were not made by Foppa and his colleagues, but
by a rival company ; and the painting of the ceiling was therefore entrusted to
Pietro Marchesi (the same, it will be remembered, who in 1469 was doing
decorative work in the Castello at Milan), Stefano de' Fedeli (one of the
painters of the Cappella Ducale in that city, see p. 80), Raffaele da Vaprio,
Gian Pietro da Corte, and others of the same company. Gadio, having been
informed by the four painters just named that the Duke's intention was to
suspend the work of the ancona and to have only the ceiling of the chapel
painted, wrote to Simonetta on June 22 to ask for instructions, and inquired
further which of the two designs for the ancona already laid before the Duke
by Foppa and his colleagues was to be adopted, in case Pietro Marchesi's
story as to the suspension of the work, should prove to be incorrect."
Shortly
after this Gadio must have received Galeazzo Maria's letter written on June 21
(Doc. No. 23), and having acted upon the instructions contained therein, he wrote
on June 27 giving full particulars of all that he had done, addressing the letter
to the Duke himself (Doc. No. 24). In it he states that he had summoned
the painters of the rival companies, who were all trying to obtain the commission
;
he found that the company of Gian Pietro da Corte, which numbered
among its ranks, in addition to the painters already named, Melchiorre
Lampugnani and Gottardo Scotti, proposed to paint the ceiling with the
Eternal Father in the centre in a golden glory surrounded by cherubim (or
according to another design without cherubim) and with twelve angels in
each section of the vaulting, except in the section near the window, where
there would be space for six only. The price of this would be 175 ducats.
1 " Non volemo ultra la dicta ancona far fare altre depincture alle asse intorno ad
dicta cappella " (Doc. No. 23). From this it is to be inferred that the lower part of the
walls of the chapel were panelled after the manner of those in the " Sala delle Asse"
in the Castello at
Milan.
2 Magenta, II, No. 378.