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

Chap. VIII. THE ALTARPIECE OF THE ROSSI CHAPEL 201
subsequent unintelligent restoration,
date "an. md .
might possibly once have stood for the
." a period by no means too late, for in many particulars the
picture seems more nearly allied in character to the first years of the sixteenth
century than to the close of the fifteenth.'
Simona Bertani died in 15 18, and it is reasonable to assume that the
picture was placed over the altar in her lifetime, and here it must have
remained for centuries, being so intimately connected with the chapel as to
have given it an alternative name, for in an inventory of 1741, in which the contents
of S. Pietro in Gessate are enumerated, though unfortunately to the
almost total exclusion of pictures, we learn that the chapel was called "del
Signore morto, intitolato S. Agostino."" Before 1776, as we noted, it was
seen and described by Albuzzio, but in 1787 the authorities at Milan, who were
engaged in reorganizing all the parishes in the city, decreed that S. Pietro in
Gessate was to be raised to the dignity of a parish church ; and in consequence
it was necessary to provide a baptistery. The Rossi Chapel, being close to
the west door, was selected as the most suitable for the purpose, and between
December 13 and 16, 1787, the altar was removed, and with it, of course,
the altarpiece, if it was still in the church at that date. From Allegranza's
incidental mention of the picture, in which he says that it was then existing
in the first chapel on the left, in the Church of S. Pietro in Gessate, and that
he read the painter's name on the hem of the garment of one of the figures,'
we must infer that he actually saw it and did not copy from Albuzzio. As his
MS. is some years later in date than that of the last-named writer,'' it seems
certain that the picture was not sold at the time of the suppression, which
took place in 1771, when the monastery was turned into an orphanage and the
1
A Hungarian writer draws attention to the fact that Foppa's picture was evidently
the prototype for a composition of the same subject in the gallery at Buda-Pesth, which
he ascribes to Bergognone and the date of which he places about 1498, basing this
opinion upon the connection of the picture with Bergognone's frescoes in the Church
of the Incoronata at Lodi.
"If this date be correct," he observes, "it would also give us
the latest date possible for the production of Foppa's altarpiece" (see Lederer Sandor,
A Szepmiiveszeti Museum Milauoi Mesterei, etc., p. 9). We are unacquainted with the
picture itself, but judging from the photograph the attribution to Bergognone seems
open to doubt, for the composition, though containing certain figures which are
undoubtedly borrowed from that master, in other particulars seems unlike him in
character.
Hence the date suggested, which rests upon the assumption that the picture
is by the same hand and of the same period as the Incoronata frescoes, does not appear
to us altogether proved.
-
Arch. Civico nel Castello Sforzesco di Milano, Fondo di Religione, Busta 1,910,
etc., and Repertoriuniy 1902, p. 77.
^ Descrizioiie . . . della Basilica di S. Eustorgio, chap, xxvii.
* Allegranza died 1785.