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

Chap. VIII. LOST FRESCO BY FOPPA, CREMA 205
as we know, to have been a prosperous painter except, if the well-known
story of the crystal bowl be correct,' at the close of his life.
We have drawn attention to the possibility of this Pieta having been a work
by Foppa in the hope that it may some day be brought to light, for Paglia's
description is sufficiently full to lead to the identification of the picture should
it be still in existence.
Another Pieta by Foppa, a fresco in the Church of the Augustinians at
Crema, perished at the time of the suppression of the monastery, and we have
no information as to the date or composition of this work. We only know
from the pages of the Ationimo that it was by Vincenzo Bressano il Vecchio,
and that it was a good work.^
A small panel of the Pieta, recently acquired by Signor Bernasconi, a
Milanese collector, is ascribed to Foppa by some critics, an attribution first
suggested, we believe, by Dr. Frizzoni. The picture is a complete wreck, but
the head of the dead Christ is fine in conception and approaches Foppa
nearly ; the other figures are poor in quality ; but as scarcely anything remains
but the underpainting it is obviously impossible to form any opinion of the
picture. Through the kindness of the owner we are able to illustrate it.
A picture closely connected with the Berlin Pieta, though inferior to it in
nobility of conception and power of characterization, is the Lament over the
Dead Body of Christ, in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the Church
of S. Giovanni Evangelista at Brescia. Paglia and other Brescian writers
ascribed it to Bellini, an attribution which has long been rejected as absurd.
More recently it has been attributed to Civerchio, which seems equally wide of
the mark, for the picture shows little or no connection in quality, either with
Civerchio's triptych in the gallery at Brescia or with the Pieta in the Church
of S. Alessandro.^
^ On this bowl Zoppo, according to Brescian writers, had painted the sack of
Brescia, a work which occupied him for two years and was destined as a gift
for the Doge Andrea Gritti ; but by an untoward accident the bowl was broken, and
the painter, overwhelmed by so great a misfortune, died of grief at Desenzano on the
Lake of Garda, at some period subsequent to 1530, the exact date not being known.
^ "Opera laudabile," Anonimo, etc., ed. Frizzoni, p. 144.
^ We are unable to adopt the plan, so much in vogue in the present day, of ascribing
all pictures of uncertain authorship but of a given school to one or two painters
belonging to that particular school with whose names we happen to be acquainted, as
though every work must of necessity have been produced by the very limited number of
well-known artists. In the Archives of Pavia and Brescia we find the names of a great
number of painters who were working in those cities in the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries ;
but most of these artists are practically unknown and are not represented by
any extant works. Yet they may have been the authors of many of the pictures which in
the present day pass under the usual familiar names.