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

Chap. X. CIVERCIIIO, BUTTINONE, ZENALE 249
1 51 7. His signed and dated altarpiecc of 1504, in the Church of S. Alessandro,
the "Lament over the Dead Body of Christ," proves that even
at this period he still remained faithful to the principles of Foppa, more
especially as regards the composition ; the same cannot be said of his
later vvrorks, such as those in the Tadini Gallery at Lovere (1539), which if
they did not bear the authentic signature of Civerchio would scarcely have
been ascribed to him, so widely do they differ in every particular from his
earlier work.^
The two painters of Treviglio, Bernardino Buttinone and Bernardo Zenale,
are often spoken of as pupils of Foppa, but we are more disposed to consider
them as his contemporaries, Buttinone being probably his senior in age.
First trained in the precepts of the Lombard school of the early fifteenth century,
they were eventually drawn into the circle of Foppa's influence and so
decidedly affected by it
his pupils.
as to justify the common belief that they were actually
The earliest known picture by Buttinone, the Madonna and Child
with SS. Bernardino and Vincent, which in addition to the signature bears a
date variously deciphered 145 . . and 148 . . though the first named is from
every point of view the most probable," affords some idea of Buttinone's
manner of painting before he came in contact with Foppa and while still
dominated by the methods of the earlier school. The types of the two saints
in Buttinone's picture are very similar to those met with also in Foppa's works,
a type founded in the main upon the iconographic tradition of early art ; but
^
To Civerchio some critics are disposed to ascribe a Madonna and Child with
angels, belonging to Cav. Liannazza at Brescia. The colour, especially the luminous
golden red robe of the Madonna, is fine in quality, and the whole picture is in a remarkably
good state of preservation, but no definite attribution is possible. It is the work of
a good Lombard painter who must have been intimately acquainted with the methods
and technique of Foppa, and shows so close a connection in many particulars with
the Pieta of S. Giovanni Evangelista at Brescia, that we are disposed to think both
pictures may be by the same hand. A picture which, judging from the photograph,
appears to have much affinity with the Liannazza panel was formerly in the Cernuschi
Collection, where it was ascribed to Bergognone. It represents the Madonna adoring
the Infant Saviour, with two angel musicians and three angels in the sky singing from
an open book.
The pose of the Virgin recalls that of Foppa's Madonna at Versailles,
but the types and forms and the rocky landscape in
the background, are very close to
those in Cav. Liannazza's picture. See for reproductions of these pictures the sale
catalogue of the Cernuschi Coll., No. 81, and Illustrazione Bresciaiia, April i, 1908.
^ Calvi (II, p. 104) gives the date as 1454, hence we may assume that in his day th*
inscription was still decipherable, and we may therefore take it as certain that his reading
was the correct one. Malaguzzi, op. cit., pp. 4, 20, and foil., and Rass. d' Arte,
October, 1907, p. 145, also takes this view and gives the date as 1454. See also Corrado
Ricci, La Pinacoleca di Brera, p. 228.