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

Chap. VIII. PI ETA, CERNUSCHI COLLECTION, cS^c. 203
From the Museo Cavalleri it passed to M. Cernuschi in Paris, and in
May, 1900, was sold witli other pictures from his collection at the Galerie
Georges Petit,' being bought by its present owner for the modest sum of
jCGo.^ From the reproduction in the sale catalogue^ we gain some idea of
the composition and general characteristics of the picture, which suffice to
prove that Caffi's attribution to Foppa was wholly unjustified, and that
Albuzzio's words would not apply to this composition, except with the aid of
certain omissions and additions, to which in point of fact Caffi was obliged to
resort in order to prove his case-
Some years later, writing in the Archivio Storico Lojubardo,* he considerably
modified his first opinion, and observed that doubts were cast upon the
authorship of Foppa and on the genuineness of the signature, and he stigmatized
the painting as hard, crude, and showing a want of harmony in the
colouring, though he still pronounced it to be identical with the picture
mentioned by Albuzzio. But his original dictum was the one which obtained
currency, and in consequence the picture figured in the Cernuschi catalogue
as the work of Foppa, and as coming from S. Pietro in Gessate, an instructive
example of the manner in which gratuitous attributions and assertions
rapidly attain to the dignity of established historical facts.
In speaking of the subject of the Pieta we may briefly refer to a composition
of the same subject mentioned by Paglia as in his day in the Oratory
of the Disciplina of S. Barnaba at Brescia. It represented a dead Christ
with the Virgin weeping, the Magdalen and St. John, "figures which
express heartfelt grief in a very life-like manner, with the addition of St.
Barnabas and St. Augustine, and two half-length figures of Disciplinati
taken from life, a work painted in the old manner, but instinct with life, by
the hand of Vincenzo Zotto, who moreover in his day had little good
fortune," or, as Paglia puts it in another cancelled passage, "which good
painter had little luck in his lifetime." ^
The description of this picture, painted in the old manner, but innate with
life and deep feeling, and by a painter who in the circumstances of his life had
not been fortunate, involuntarily makes us think of Foppa, and suggests the
^ According to the sale catalogue of the Cernuschi Collection, the signature of
Foppa was legible on the picture, which accounts for Caffi's attribution.
- Chroniques des Arts, June 30, 1900.
' No. 78. *
1878, p. 98.
^ Giardino della Pittura (Aut. MSS., f. 437 and 448). In the copy of this work,
prepared for the press some years after the death of the author, which underwent much
alteration at the hands of the editor, this passage has been greatly curtailed, and
reads as follows: "Una tavola del Salvatore con la Madre, la Maddalena, etc., di
Vincenzo Zotto, pocho fortunate."