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

Chap. IX. SCHOOL PICTURES: BRESCIA AND MILAN 237
SS. Faustino and Giovita were to be represented. This might be taken as
an additional proof of the identity of our picture with the altarpiece of
S, Faustino in Riposo mentioned in the Istrumenti Municipali in the year
1532. That picture was evidently not replaced in the oratory after the reconstruction
in 1595, but a year later a painting of the same subject, and provided
with an inscription recording its former position, was placed in the Sala
de' Mercanti in order " that in the future both the eyes and the souls of the
devout might thereby be illumined," an inscription proving that the new
owners of the altarpiece valued it highly. Rossi in the first quarter of the
seventeenth century' alludes to the picture in the "Sala de' Mercanti," but
unfortunately he only speaks of it incidentally with reference to the saints
being represented in sacerdotal garments as priest and deacon, and not as
soldiers
-
; but beyond this cursory notice we have failed to find the slightest
allusion to the picture in the works of any Brescian writer, and the authorities
at the Chamber of Commerce are unable to furnish any information as to its
former history.
It seems to have been practically forgotten for centuries, until
the Exhibition of 1904 at Brescia brought it into notice once more.^
Very closely allied to Foppa in many particulars and constantly ascribed
to him is the beautiful and well-known Madonna and Child in the Poldi
Pezzoli Museum at Milan. Its connection with the Madonnas mentioned in
chapter in is evident, more especially with those in the Trivulzio and Davis
collections ;
yet the picture contains so many puzzling divergencies from
Foppa's typical manner as to render any definite attribution to him impossible.
The type and expression of the Child, the drawing of the eyes, of the hand,
and of the feet, connect the picture closely with him; the landscape, with the
very characteristic treatment of the trees, which we find in so many of the
works already alluded to, is composed altogether in his spirit ; on the other
p. 58.
'
Rossi, Historia de' gloriosissimi SS. Martiri Faustino et Giovita^ Brescia, 1624,
- They are sometimes represented as warriors, in illustration of the legend that
during the siege of Brescia by Piccinino in 1438 they miraculously appeared and saved
the city. As such they are represented also in certain sculptures of the Museo Cristiano
at Brescia, and in the frontispiece of the Passio Sanctorum Martyrum Faustini et Jovite
Brixiensium, printed by Joannes Antonius Brixianinus, 151 1, a rare work of which the
Queriniana Library at Brescia possesses an example (Coll. Rossi, No. 10 of Valentini's
Catalogue). On the frontispiece of the later Passione de SS. Martyri Faust, e Jov.
Cavalieri di Cristo, printed at Brescia in 1534, they are represented precisely as in the
picture in the Chamber of Commerce, the xylograph being perhaps based upon that
composition. The place of the Madonna is taken by St. ApoUonius, Bishop of Brescia,
who is said to have converted these saints.
^ At that Exhibition it was rightly ascribed to the school of Foppa (see Catalogo,
etc., No. 14).