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

Chap. VI. ST. SEBASTIAN, CASTELLO MUSEUM 145
from a coin or plaquette, and recalling the medallions with which Jacopo
Bellini so often decorates the buildings in many of his drawings.
The colours throughout are bright and strong ;
green with purple and
dark red predominates in the garments of the foremost archer, red with
orange yellow in those of the second, while the officer in the background is
clad in plate-armour and wears a green tunic over his shirt of mail. The two
archers and the officer commanding them are placed beneath the arch in a
manner constantly met with in the drawings of Jacopo Bellini.^ The small
space into which these figures are crowded produces a somewhat cramping
effect, and the composition in consequence appears lacking in freedom of
movement and atmosphere ; but this cannot be laid to the charge of the
painter, for in producing this work for the Church of S. Maria di Brera
Foppa must have been greatly hampered by existing conditions. He was
ordered to fill
a contracted space at the side of the altar in one of the chapels,
the general plan of the composition and the number of figures to be treated
being probably laid down by the donor. Under these circumstances, therefore,
the painter had not a free hand ; but in spite of these disadvantages we
are bound to admit that he has used the means at his disposal with consummate
skill. In judging of works of art the conditions under which they were
produced must always be taken into account, as well as the fact that a fresco
designed to occupy a restricted space in a church can never produce the effect
intended by the painter when torn from its
walls of a public gallery.^
surroundings and exhibited on the
In the large altarpiece of the same subject in the Castello we are transported
into a freer atmosphere : the saint is placed in the centre of the composition,
bound to a column akin to the one in the fresco and mounted on a
very similar pedestal, but raised to a higher level above his executioners, who
here stand in the open air and are more convincing in their action and movements
than in the Brera fresco ; the archway, which in that work tended to
produce a cramping effect, is here replaced by a landscape, in which the touch
of the trees and bushes, and the treatment of rock and of the water with
buildings and distant hills beyond, are in the highest degree characteristic of
Foppa ; in the town with a hill rising above it on the right some writers have
1
Crowe and Cavalcaselle (II, p. 4), speaking of this fresco, observe that it "has the
prominent peculiarities of the Paduan school, as shown in the careful setting and
measurement of the figures in their places"; but these peculiarities, traceable originally
to a study of the antique,
especially Giraudon, Nos. 769, 770, and Ricci, op.
are met with equally in the drawings of Jacopo Bellini (see
-
This also applies to the fresco of 1485, which must have originally occupied a
position far above the level of the spectator's eye and was calculated to be seen from
below.
cit.).