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

—
i6o
VINCENZO FOPPA
Manfredo, son of Niccolo Fornari, was connected by ties of relationship
with some of the great art patrons of Liguria^—with Bendinelli SauH, with
Pietro Gara, Bishop of Savona, and possibly also with the pious founder
of the Certosa.^ The Fornari chapel in S. Maria di Loreto was the second
on the left, destined, as we gather from the inscription in the refectory,
for a burial place for Manfredo and his family ;
until comparatively recent
years it contained the altarpiece, and persons still living at Savona remember
to have seen it hanging there, but for some reason unknown it was removed
from thence to the small, dark chapel on the north of the High Altar. Here
it was discovered by Comm. Vittorio Poggi, Director of the Gallery at Savona,
who eventually had it removed to that collection.^ The church suffered
severely at the time of the French Revolution, and it was doubtless in order to
preserve the inscription commemorating the founders of the chapel that the
stone tablet was removed to the refectory and covered with whitewash. At
that time the picture must also have been roughly handled, for it is now in
a deplorably injured condition ; but in spite of this the hand of Foppa is still
discernible in the central panel, and as one of the four dated works at present
known is of great interest. The inscription, which is at the base of the
central panel, is as follows :
14X9'^DEVIII!+AESiMP.lIS+W01£4M+qp^WfREi>,l^»
' The Fornari family were themselves great patrons of art : Leonardo Fornari,
Bishop of Mariana in Corsica, employed Barbagelata in 1489 ; and Pasquale Fornari,
in the early sixteenth century, was the patron of Pier Francesco Sacchi of Pavia
(Al., II, 181, and Guida, 510). For the history of the Fornari see: Federici, Abecedario
delle Fam. Nob. di Genova, 143, and Scrutinio della Nobilta Ligustica, 445
; F. Ferro,
Libra delle Fatn. Nob., etc., 144; Giscardi, Origine, etc. ; Buonaroti, Alberi genealogici
di diverse FamigUc Nobili Genovesi, 404, 407 ; Delia Cella, FatJj. Genovesi, etc.
- If this Embrone (sometimes by Picconi and others spelt Embrono) belonged
to the Pinelli-Embrone family, he may have been connected with Manfredo Fornari,
whose aunt (a sister of Manfredo's father Niccolo) married a Pinello- Embrone
(Buonaroti, 404). Accinelli {Lig. Sacr., I, 495) calls him Stefano Embrone da Oreo,
and states that he was a baker ("fornaro," perhaps a confusion with the name of the
Fornari family), a somewhat improbable tale, and it is more likely that the founder
of the Certosa who in 1480 obtained the sanction of Pietro Gara, Bishop of Savona,
to begin the building— a sanction confirmed in the following year by the Cardinal Legate,
resident at Genoa, Giov. Battista Savelli—was a member of the noble Genoese family of
Embrone, a branch of which had in the fourteenth century settled at Savona. For the
Embrone family see: Federici, lac. cit., II, 763; Delia Cella, III, 55; F. Ferro, 203, etc.
* The picture, however, is not the property of the Gallery, but of the Episcopal
Seminary at Savona. The owners are at liberty to sell it so long as they furnish a
guarantee that it
does not leave Italy.