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

Chap. VII. FRESCOES BY GIOV. PIETRO DA CEMMO 167
tions may have gone so far as to have justified Vincenzo in giving the evasive
answer to Griffi mentioned in the ducal missive of September 27 (Doc.
No. 46); but it is quite certain that these negotiations ultimately failed, and that
Foppa did not fulfil the engagement himself, for the painter who actually
executed the frescoes was that Giovanni Pietro da Cemmo whom we have
already had occasion to mention in these pages. His talents were not of a
high order, and he rarely rises above the level of a local artist ; but being
extraordinarily prolific and industrious, and having considerable facility as a
fresco painter, his services seem to have been greatly in request, more especially
among the Augustinians, for, in addition to the works painted for the
order at S. Barnaba, we know from the Auonwio^ that he executed a large
cycle of frescoes in terra-verde and colour in the refectory and library of their
monastery at Crema, and that in the most celebrated of all their habitations,
the great monastery at Cremona, he covered the walls of the cloisters with
scenes from the life of St. Augustine.^ His dependence upon Vincenzo
Foppa is seen in a more or less marked degree from his earliest to his latest
work, and he must also have been effected in no small measure by the Paduan
school, but the character of his signed works is sufficiently decided to enable
us to ascribe to him the wall paintings of the Library of S. Barnaba with
absolute certainty. In his signed frescoes of 1475 in the Church of the
Annunziata di Borno (Val Camonica) the groups of angels in terra-verde and
bronze colour which fill the vault of the choir, are the direct forerunners of
the figures of saints and martyrs surrounding the "Christ in Glory" in the
large fresco opposite the entrance door in the Library of S. Barnaba ;
and
many other links, too numerous to mention, connect these much earlier works
with the series at Brescia ;
but the most absolute confirmation of the authorship
of Pietro da Cemmo is afforded by the frescoes of the Church of
117, the ceiling
S. Rocco at Bagolino, which are much nearer in date to those of S. Barnaba,
being of i486, a series in which he merely signs himself "Cemigena,"^
"Qui hoc opus pinxit Cemigena fuit."
The ceiling of the choir at Bagolino follows the usual scheme of decoration
then in vogue, to which allusion was made in chapter v, p.
of the Averoldi Chapel in the Carmine at Brescia being an almost contemporaneous
example.
At Bagolino each Evangelist is
surrounded by a glory composed of heads
of saints in terra-verde, mostly in profile and with little variety of expression,
but in type, drawing, and method of grouping closely resembling some of
the terra-verde figures just mentioned in the fresco of "Christ in Glory"
on p.
1
Ed. Frizzoni, p. 145.
^ Idid., p. 88.
' That is, a native of Cemo, the present Cemmo in the Val Camonica ;
the Anonimo
145 calls him only " Zuanpiero de Valcamonica."