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

142 VINCENZO FOPPA
of the Church in the Portinari Chapel. The figure of the Madonna is
admirably set within the space beneath this arch ;
the drawing- of the head
shows the same refined feeling for line and pose as the early Madonna at
Settignano ; the Child, with arms outstretched pointing to the scrolls held
by the saints on either side, and radiant expression, is composed in one
of the painter's happiest moods, and is drawn with great skill and knowledge,
and the accomplishment displayed in the treatment of the arch and of the
consoles on which kneel the two saints, fully corroborates the praise bestowed
upon Foppa by Lomazzo, who speaks of him as a master of perspective.'
The painter's intimate observation too is felt in the exquisite rendering of
the tappeto hanging from the parapet, with the waved lines
of the border and
the beautiful design and colour scheme. The modelling of the flesh is softer
than is usually the case with the master, and the scale of the colouring
throughout this fresco, is lighter and gayer in tone than is Vincenzo's wont
in his panel pictures. As already observed (chap, ii), it shows considerable
affinity in colouring and other particulars with the fresco in the Wallace
Collection, a work probably produced about the same period as this
Madonna. The Virgin in the fresco of 1485 wears a blue mantle lined with
green and a pink robe, the Infant Saviour a yellow shirt with a waistband
of reddish lilac, that shade found also in the Wallace fresco, for which, as
already noted, Foppa had a special predilection ; through him it became
popular with many painters of the school, even in the second generation.
A certain nervelessness in the appearance of the Madonna's left hand,
which rests against the body of the Child, but seems incapable of grasping
it securely, is a peculiarity almost invariably met with in Foppa's work ;
we find it more or less accentuated in the Madonnas of Savona and of the
National Gallery, in the Virgin with the dead Christ at Berlin, and in many
other works. The same feeling is apparent in the pose of the hand of
St. John Baptist, which may be compared with the treatment of the hands
in the Annunciation at Arcore and in M. Cheramy's picture. The head of
the saint and the upper part of the body show all Foppa's individual traits,
and the colour of the mantle is again of that shade of reddish lilac so characteristic
of this painter ; but in the treatment of the folds the master's typical
methods have been exaggerated, and we note the same defects which were
manifest in the draperies of some of the figures in the Brera polyptych.
The surface is broken up into numerous meaningless and contorted folds,
and there is little sense of form, structure, or proportion beneath this mantle ;
here again therefore it would seem that Foppa may have made use of the
services of an assistant. The saint on the right, St. John the Evangelist,
1 Trattato, Lib. VI, 317, and Idea del Tempio della Pittura, 108.