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

250 VINCENZO FOPPA
the difference between the two painters in their early period is as great as that
which separates a rigidly conventional form of representation from an art
deriving life and inspiration from a direct and intelligent
study of nature.
On the other hand, a close affinity between the two masters is apparent in
the circular panels with half-lengths of saints in the collection of Cav. Aldo
Noseda at Milan, and in a third example, evidently belonging to the same
series, in the gallery at Parma;' while the small Madonna and Child of the
Brera,' which some critics are disposed to place in the last period of Buttinone's
activity, shows a yet more intimate connection with the Brescian master,
for he has here taken as his model Foppa's Madonna and Child in the Castello
at
Milan, as we have already noted in chapter iii.
In the Treviglio altarpiece, the joint work of Buttinone and Zenale, commissioned
in 1485, links with Foppa are also noticeable in certain types and
forms, in the quality of the flesh tones, and in other particulars, and still more
is this the case in two panels—fragments of an altarpiece — in the Poldi Pezzoli
Museum at Milan, representing SS. Stephen and Anthony of Padua,'
which, owing to their manifest connection with the saints in
Foppa's polyptych
in the Brera, are now rightly ascribed to his school ;
they were formerly
attributed to Zenale on account of their supposed identity with portions of an
altarpiece from Cantii, the central panel of which is said to have been inscribed
with the name of Zenale and the date 1507.* Two circular panels with halflengths
of SS. Jerome and Ambrose hanging on the same wall as the
SS. Stephen and Anthony, and like those paintings fragments of a polyptych,'
are variously attributed to Buttinone and to Zenale. They are, however, pure
products of the school, we might almost say of the workshop, of Foppa, and
it is clear that the painter of these panels, whether Buttinone, Zenale, or
another, must at some period of his career have stood in very close relations
to the Brescian master. Intimately associated with Foppa are two panels of
saints in
the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at Richmond, which are practically
late versions of the SS. Bernardino and Anthony of Foppa's altarpiece for
S. Maria delle Grazie at Bergamo (now Brera). ° It is very probable that the
donor of the lost altarpiece of which these saints must have formed part, may
have expressly ordered the painter to take as his model the ancona over the
' Malaguzzi, op. cit., pp. 23, 31, 41.
^ Ibid., p. 45 and pi. 18.
' Reproduced Rass. d' Arfc, November, 1907, p. 164.
* See Morelli (III, 132, 133), who identified these panels with portions of the Cantu
altarpiece, but ascribed them to Buttinone; Calvi, op. cit., II, p. 123; Malaguzzi, op. cit.,
p. 63.
* Morelli, ibid., considered that these panels also belonged to the Cantu altarpiece.
* Cf. illustrations, chap. v.