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

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Chap. VI. ST. SEBASTIAN, BRERA 143
appears out of harmony with the character of the remainder of the composition,
owing to its modernized condition. Originally it may have
approached in type and expression some of the more gentle visaged saints
of the Brera altarpiece, but the face and form as we see them now with
empty expression and exaggerated sweetness of mien and the broad and
flowing lines of the drapery, have scarcely a trace of fifteenth century art.
The figure belongs for the most part, it would appear, to the era of restoration,
when this fresco was removed from the wall of the sacristy of S. Maria
di Brera, for which it was painted, and transferred to panel.
The fresco may be identical with the one mentioned by Bianconi ' as
over the door in the sacristy of the Church of S. Maria di Brera ; he
describes it as one of the first works of Bramantino, but it receives no
mention from Lomazzo or any of the earlier writers. When the church was
destroyed it was removed to the Museo Archeologico, and from thence by
Professor Bertini to the Brera. It is not improbable that Bramantino
took from this composition the idea for his own fresco in the Palazzo
del Broletto (now in the Brera), in which the motive of the Child with
outstretched arms and radiant expression is also treated, and in a very
attractive manner.
For the same Church of S. Maria di Brera, Foppa painted his celebrated
fresco of St. Sebastian. Pictures of this saint were usually votive offerings
dedicated during some specially virulent outbreak of plague. According to
Predari, who quotes from a MS. in the Ambrosiana,^ Milan was eighteen
times depopulated by this scourge between the twelfth and seventeenth
centuries.
It was exceptionally severe at Milan and Pavia during the period
of our painter's career of which we have been speaking—that is between 1479
and i486. In 1479 the city of Pavia had recourse to special intercessions, of
which Bossi has left us an interesting record in his Storia Pavese.'^ By July,
i486, the disease had carried off fifty thousand persons at Milan, ^ and it
continued with more or less severity till 1489, having by that time claimed
'
Guida, etc., p. 392.
"^
Dissertazione cronologica di varii contagii.
^ Vol. V, anno 1479. He states that when the pestilence was at its height the whole
city had recourse to the intercessions of the blessed martyr Sebastian ; the clergy and
people, accompanied by the Podesta and the entire governing body of the city, went in
solemn procession to the Church of S. Pietro in Vinculi to visit the relics of the saint
preserved there, and immediately after, he adds, the plague was miraculously stayed.
The chroniclers give us innumerable examples of these special appeals to the saint
at Brescia, for example, "in tempo di contaggio" it was determined to make a procession
with the sacred relics of the Cross and erect an altar to St. Sebastian in
the hospital (Zamboni, Collect, de rebus Bnx.}.
* Corio, Lib. VI, p. 443.