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

Chap. X. MONTORFANO, BRAMANTINO AND OTHERS 253
as well as a connection with other painters of his school. In tarious
particulars of composition and groupinji", in the types and gestures, and in the
character of the backg-round, we are reminded of many of Foppa's works, and
we think it not improbable that Montorfano may have taken as the model
for his own composition the great fresco of the Crucifixion in S. Giacomo
at Pavia, a work, as we saw, which exercised a widespread influence over
North Italian painters. Links with Foppa are also apparent in the
frescoes of the Chapel of St. Anthony in S. Pietro in Gessate at Milan,
which were ascribed to Montorfano by Crowe and Cavalcaselle' and Morelli,^
an attribution now generally accepted ; a follower of Foppa too was the
author of the fresco in Casa Ravizza at Milan (formerly the refectory of the
Convent of S. Agostino Bianco), a painter whom some critics would also
identify with Montorfano' though we are unable to recognize his hand in this
work ;
yet another representative of the school was the anonymous master
who executed the series of frescoes in the Chapel of St. Joseph in S. Pietro in
Gessate,\vith portrait heads recalling those in the Library of S. Barnaba at
Brescia; and the Milanese Ambrogio de Predis and the Pavian portrait painter
Bernardino de' Conti must also be classed among those affected by the art of
Vincenzo Foppa in their early time.^
Bartolomeo Suardi, called Bramantino, is said to have been influenced in
some degree by Foppa, but it must be admitted that such an influence is hardly
perceptible, except in one work. Moreover, we have no notices of Bramantino
until after 1490, by which time Foppa's career as a teacher in the Duchy of Milan
had closed."' The one work which, however, shows a very intimate connection
with our painter is the fresco representing St. Martin giving his cloak to the
^ II, 67.
- III, 122. See also Rass. d' Arte, 1907, pp. 165, 166.
^ Malaguzzi, op. cit., 56, and Rass., p. 168.
^ Rass., 164, 165.
^ Here may be mentioned an altarpiece at Assiano near Cusago, which has recently
been referred to as "one of the good works of the school of Foppa," and was reproduced
in the Rassegna d' Arte of June, 1907 (p. 96). It bears the signature of two
otherwise unknown Lombard painters, Marco Longobardo and Giovanni Auroni
of Cantu. It is a feeble work overweighted with architectural details, and as far
removed, we should say, from the immediate school of Foppa as is a picture with this
attribution in the Ambrosiana (three panels in one frame. No. 89).
* Morelli, op. cit., 122 ; Crowe and Cav., II, pp. 14 and 20; and others. Dr. Suida,
Austr. Jahrbuch XXV, p. 11, considers that Bramantino's first master was Buttinone,
though he cites several works showing a connection also "with earlier Lombard art"
{ibid., pp. 18, 19). We noted in chapter vi that Bramantino may have taken the idea
for his Madonna and Child of the Broletto from Foppa's fresco of 1485, but the
connection is not sufficient to afford proof of any personal relation between the two
masters.