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

Chap. VIII. PROCESSIONAL BANNER, ORZINUOVI 213
altarpiece of a Benedictine church is proved by the presence of the abbot
who kneels on the left—
probably the donor of the picture, who had caused
himself to be portrayed as St. Benedict—though whether this church was at
Pavia, Milan, Brescia, or elsewhere we cannot tell.*
Like the National Gallery Adoration of the Magi, this altarpiece was once
in the Fesch Collection," and was bought at the sale of these pictures in 1845
by M. Georges, of Paris, for the small sum of ^28. Subsequently it was
acquired by the late M. Nottret, Chnnoine honoraire and Almoner to the
Augustinian nuns at Versailles. By him it was offered to the authorities of
the Louvre, who kept the picture for six months and had it restored, but
eventually returned it to M. Nottret. In his collection it was seen by the
late M. Eugene Miintz, who recognized in it
a work of the early years of the
sixteenth century, and being unaware that our painter was still living at that
date, assumed that it must be by Vincenzo Foppa "the younger." On the
death of M. Nottret it came by inheritance into the possession of its present
owner, the Abbe Lefevre. Through his kindness we are able to publish an
illustration of this interesting picture, which may serve to draw attention to it
and may perhaps result in some further light being thrown upon its authorship
and history.
What may be designated one of Foppa's latest works, executed in part or
possibly finished by his assistants, is the processional banner painted for a
church at Orzinuovi, a small town between Brescia and Soncino. The
picture, in a very neglected state, now hangs on the wall of an oratory called
Chiesa dei Morti, opposite to the parish church of Orzinuovi. On the front
of the banner is represented the Madonna with the Child on her knee, seated
on a wooden throne beneath a red canopy between SS. Bernardino and
Catherine of Alexandria, who stands upon the wheel ; on the reverse is
St. Sebastian bound to a tree, with St. Roch on the right and St. George, the
patron saint of Orzinuovi, to whom the castle and one of the churches had
*
We might conjecture that the picture was produced for some church at Milan, for
there is an undoubted connection between certain parts of this composition (the angels in
the air, the hill-side on the left, etc.) and one of the frescoes of the Chapel of St. Joseph
in S. Maria della Pace (now Brera) ;
the latest edition of the catalogue gives all these
frescoes to Luini (pp. 176-79) ; while Morelli {Italian Painters, II, p. 7, note 3) ascribed
them to a pupil or imitator of Bramantino ; further, the curious flat-topped heads of
the angels are undoubtedly connected in form with certain forms of head met with in
the works of Luini, especially in those from Villa Pelucca (now Brera), though in the
drawing of the features and in expression they differ widely from Luini's characteristic
types. Yet we think it is in the Milanese school connected with Bramantino and Luini
that the painter or renovator of these angels in
than in the school of
Brescia.
^ See Galerie . . Fesch, cit., p. 209.
Foppa's picture must be sought, rather