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

Chap. V. PAINTING OF THE B. SIMONINO AT BRESCIA 115
fully occupied in the Chapel of the Relics and at S. Giacomo.
Assuming, therefore,
that he was the author of this representation of the B. Simonino and that
he painted it on the spot, the most likely date for its execution appears to be
the one mentioned above. That a painting commemorating the child-martyr
should have been executed at Brescia not two months after his death need not
surprise us, in view of the extraordinary proportions to which the cultus immediately
attained. Brescia must have received the news of the tragedy before it
penetrated elsewhere, for one of her own citizens, Mattia Tiberino, was
physician to the Bishop of Trent at the time, and a few days after the occurrence
wrote a very full account of it to the authorities at Brescia. In this letter
he extolled the child-martyr, recounted numerous miracles wrought by him,
and stirred up hatred against the Jews.^ Thus if Foppa was at Brescia at
that moment, it is extremely probable that he was the author of the painting
in the Carmine in which the death of the child was depicted, though whether
it was a simple votive fresco executed in a brief space of time or a more
elaborate panel picture commissioned from Foppa at Brescia and painted in
the master's workshop on his return to Pavia we cannot tell.'' The rapidity
with which the devotion to the B. Simonino spread, especially in Venetian
territory, was so startling as to alarm both the ecclesiastical and civil authorities.
In the course of this year, 1475, it was brought to the notice of Pope
Sixtus IV that in consequence of this devotion popular sentiment was being
violently aroused against the Jews. On October 10, 1475, he therefore issued
an Encyclical prohibiting, under pain of excommunication, the diffusion of
particulars relating to the death of the child by means of sermons, publications,
or any form of representation.^ The Doge of Venice, Pietro Mocenigo,
was requested to enforce this Papal decree throughout his dominions, and he
proceeded to do so in the month of November by means of a Ducal missive
' Copies of this letter in the Arch. Mun. Brescia, Registrum C, f. 45 v., and Reg. E,
ff. 24-26, though the date is wrongly given as 15 Kal. Aprilis (March 18), an evident
mistake of the copyist. On referring to the copies of the letter printed at Nuremberg
and Vicenza we find the date given there as secundo Fionas Aprilis, and though this is a
date not found in the Roman Calendar, it is a well-known fact that it was a very common
mistake to use secundo nonas iox pridie nonas. The date of the letter was therefore April
4 ('* pridie nonas Aprilis "), and the news must have reached Brescia a few days later.
- Earlier writers, like Capriolo and the chroniclers quoted by Faini, do not mention
the painter, and give us no clue as to whether the work was a fresco or a panel picture ;
but from the manner in which later writers (who ascribe it to Foppa) allude to it we
might infer that it was a panel ; and Maccarinelli, who wrote in the last years of the
eighteenth century, speaks of it as the altarpiece of the chapel, from which—assuming
that he did not write from hearsay—we might infer that it was still in existence at that
date.
* See Martene, Veterum Scriptortim, II, col. 1516.