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

Chap. VIII. ADORATION OF THE MAGI, NATIONAL GALL. 207
more advanced period of art than the era of Foppa, and in it are noticeable
many qualities characteristic of the later phases and developments of the
Lombard school ;
nevertheless it appears to us that this picture in composition
and manner of treating the subject, in its return to types, gestures, and
incidents typical of an earlier period, shows certain definite links with the
school of Foppa. It has been ascribed to Luini by some critics, and if the
attribution be correct it would furnish an undeniable proof that this master,
whose artistic origin is still shrouded in obscurity, must have been trained in
the school of Vincenzo Foppa.'
The Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery, the most admirably
preserved of all the master's panel pictures, is, like the Berlin Pieta, deeply
imbued in every part with his character. It is certainly the crowning achievement
of his mature years, and taking it all in all, perhaps the finest and most
typical existing work of the Lombard school of this period. The freshness
and vigour of the whole composition, the variety of the motives, the carefulness
of execution even to the minutest details, the crispness of touch and brilliant
quality of the colour, might cause us to hesitate in ascribing such a masterpiece
to the old age of the painter, who must have been at least seventy when he
executed this picture, yet certain particulars make it
impossible to believe that
it could have been a product of earlier date. Of all Italians, the Brescians
have ever been among the most healthful, vigorous, and long-lived, and Foppa
was no unworthy representative of this hardy race ; like his fellow-citizen
Francesco da Mantua, who at ninety was still full of life and activity, Foppa
appears to have preserved his faculties and talents unimpaired, and like his
great Venetian contemporary Giovanni Bellini, he continued to paint with
undiminished energy, as we have reason to think, up to an advanced age. A
proof of Foppa 's exceptional vigour and of his long activity in the exercise of his
profession is afforded by the documents relating to the altarpiece of S. Maria
Gualtieri, which show us the master not only executing paintings in the
closing years of the fifteenth century, but journeying himself from Brescia to
Pavia in 1499, without doubt an arduous undertaking in those days.
In spite of the strikingly Foppesque character of the picture in the National
Gallery, it was formerly, like the Brera fresco of 1485 and the St. Sebastian
of the Castello, ascribed to Bramantino, and the correct attribution to Foppa
was first suggested, we believe, by Crowe and Cavalcaselle.^ Here once more,
in addition to the unanswerable testimony of certain types, it is the form,
feeling, and pose of the hands which, as in so many of the works already
mentioned, afford evidence of the most convincing character of the authorship
of Foppa. The right hand of the Madonna, with fingers outspread upon the
*
See also chap. x.
'^ II, 7
; cf. also Frizzoni, Arte Ital. . . 7iella Gait. . . di Londra.