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

Chap. IV. DEATH OF GALEAZZO MARIA SFORZA 103
The figures of the saints for the panels over the reliquaries apparently caused
the delay, for as the painters desire that the work shall be uniformly perfect,
they will not allow any artist outside their own company to touch it. Vismara
and Costantino, we learn, are at work upon some of the panels at Milan, but
Master Bonifazio and Master Vincenzo are working at the ancona at Pavia.
The principal parts, the large panels of the ancona, were therefore the work
of these two masters, and their desire was to execute it in the best possible
manner.
This is the last document we have relating to this great work, then, after so
many years of anxious thought and toil, nearing its completion. We have no
record even to prove that it was ever finished, for on the 26th of December
everything was thrown into confusion owing to the sudden death of the Duke,
who was assassinated in the Church of S. Stefano at Milan, whither he had
gone to attend Mass;^ and for some time after this tragic event documents
make no mention of painters and their works, except in so far as the settlement
of claims for arrears of payment was concerned. In the troublous years
which followed, the energies of Gadio were directed entirely to fortifications
and to strengthening the defences of buildings within and without, the
pictorial decoration being altogether neglected. But what of the long labours
of Foppa and his companions in the chapel ? Was the ancona ever completed,
or was the whole work suddenly brought to a standstill ?
The meagre information which we are able to glean from certain inventories,
relating to the relics in the Castello (to which we have already
alluded), seems to show that the work was never proceeded with, that the
relics were never placed in the honourable position destined for them by the
murdered Duke, and that probably only certain portions of the paintings
prepared by Foppa had been preserved, and moreover not in the chapel.
From the inventory which was drawn up on November 29, 1487,
when the relics were consigned by Count Giovanni Attendolo to the
keeping of the new governor of the Castello of Pavia, Guido Antonio
Arcimboldi, it is clear that at this date the relics were not preserved in the
great ancona of the chapel, as would certainly have been stated had Foppa's
work been completed, but were stored in chests in another part of the
building; for whereas the chapel was situated on the ground floor on the right
of the great entrance hall," the relics, according to the inventory, were "in
the chamber on the ground floor of the tower of the castle looking toivm-ds
the park and facing west, where the treasure of the Illustrious Prince was
^
See C. M. Ady, Milan under the Sforza, pp. iu-13, for a full account of Gian
Galeazzo's violent death.
- Elia Giardini, op. cit., p. i6.