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

200 VINCENZO FOPPA
one of their principal churches. It would, however, have been strange if in a
chapel dedicated to his patron saint, Agostino de' Rossi should have commissioned
an altarpiece only, containing not the slightest allusion to St. Augustine.'
Such a proceeding would have been totally at variance with the
methods and tendencies in vogue at the time. It is not improbable therefore
that De' Rossi's plan for the decoration of his chapel may have included a
series of frescoes dealing with the history of his patron saint. The present
aspect of the walls, however, does not justify the assumption that such a scheme
was ever carried out, and if negotiations on the subject between Foppa and
De' Rossi took place, they were doubtless protracted, the whole scheme being
frustrated at last by the death of Agostino in i486 ;
for we know from Puccinelli
that he was buried in his chapel in that year.
But was the picture painted for Agostino? He may indeed have originally
commissioned the altarpiece, but it could not have been produced in his lifetime,
for in that case we should be forced to assume that it was painted
before i486, a date not justified by the aspect of the picture. After 1487
we know Foppa to have been occupied in Liguria, and then to have entered
the service of the Brescian Commune, with the understanding that he was
engaged to teach painting at Brescia ; he could not therefore have accepted
work in other places. But on the sudden termination of his appointment
there, we may be sure that he would have been glad to obtain employment
outside Brescia, and would doubtless have applied to some of his Milanese
patrons of former days.
The wife of Agostino de' Rossi, Simona Bertani of Correggio, survived
her husband for many years, and it is extremely probable that it was she who
commissioned Foppa to execute the altarpiece after 1495, that she chose the
subject of the Pieta, as one peculiarly fitting as a memorial in a chantry
chapel, and that she commemorated in it not only her dead husband, but also
her daughter-in-law the wife of her adopted son Angelo Chiarissimi, who was
buried in the Rossi Chapel in 1495 ;" but where it was executed—whether at
Milan itself, at Pavia in the workshop of Giovanni Siro and contemporaneously
with the altarpiece of S. Maria Gualtieri, or at Brescia in Foppa's
bottega—we have no means of ascertaining. As to the date, some further
clue might be gained from a closer study of the inscription. The name of the
painter, inscribed, as we have already stated, on the hem of the robe of Nicodemus,
is followed by some further enigmatical letters which, allowing for
1 In the Griffi and Obiani altarpieces, dedicated in the chapels of SS. Ambrose and
Anthony, the donors were in each case represented under the protection of the patron
saint of the chapel. The Griffi altarpiece is mentioned by Puccinelli, op. cit., p. 151, and
other Milanese writers ;
the Obiani picture is still in its place over the altar, in the Chapel
of St. Anthony.
^
Puc, op. cit., p. 325.