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

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

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I50 VINCENZO FOPPA impossible, though the compositions of Donatello and his followers undoubtedly attracted him powerfully at a certain epoch of his career. At a later period the works of Mantegna may have affected him to some extent, as we infer from the strain of Mantegnesque feeling occasionally noticeable in some of Foppa's compositions. The St. Sebastian of the Castello, for instance, seems to presuppose an acquaintance with Mantegna's version of the same subject in the Vienna Museum, a work perhaps thirty years earlier in date than Foppa's painting.' The connection between the two pictures is seen more especially in the pose of the figure and in the composition of the background ; in both, the saint is raised on a pedestal and bound to a column placed against a massive pier, from which springs a broken arch. But far too much stress has, we think, been laid upon the relations between Vincenzo and the painters of Padua, and we most emphatically deny that he was ever in any sense a pupil of Mantegna or at any time a servile follower of his methods. Foppa's true place in art was defined by Morelli when he referred to him as "that great master who has been far too little appreciated . . . who holds in the schools of Brescia, and more especially of Milan, a position similar to that occupied at Padua and Mantua by the mighty Mantegna,"- a position therefore of equality with Mantegna as head and leader of a school. The admirable knowledge of architectural design displayed by Foppa in the frescoes of the St. Sebastian of the Brera and of the Madonna of 1485, the more developed feeling for atmosphere and space perceptible in the background of the composition in the Castello, may have been due in some measure to direct intercourse with another master, namely, Bramante, though we have no documents to aid us in proving this with absolute certainty. From 1474 onwards^ the great Umbrian architect and painter was undoubtedly living at Milan, and in the years when Foppa was executing his frescoes in S. Maria di Brera was engaged upon architectural works and paintings in that city. Moreover, those of Foppa's works in which these more developed tendencies are manifest were certainly produced later than 1474, that is after Bramante had settled at Milan, and judging from that master's noble and impressive Christ at the Column in the Church of the 1 Three examples of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian by Mantegna exist. At Aigueperse, Puy de Dome (Kristeller, p. 138, fig. 56, who dates it as about 1454); at Vienna, as noted above, of 1457-59 (Kristeller, p. 168, pi. 10) ; and in the Ca d' Oro at Venice, a work placed by Kristeller (p. 330, fig. 112) at the close of the master's life. - Ivan Lermolieff, Die Galcrie zn Berlin, ed. Frizzoni, 1893, pp. 106, 107. ^ Miintz, I, 127 ; Beltrami in Rassegna cT Arte, 1901 ; Carotti, Le opere di Leonardo, Bramante, etc., p. 98.

ST. FRANCIS RECEIVING THE STIGMATA (FrcSio transferred to canvas) MILAN: CASTELLO MUSEUM

ST.<br />

FRANCIS RECEIVING THE STIGMATA<br />

(FrcSio transferred to canvas)<br />

MILAN: CASTELLO MUSEUM

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