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

254 VINCENZO FOPPA
beggar, from the suppressed Dominican Monastery of S. Maria delle Vetere.
Here the colouring, the types, the pose of the head and drawing of the features,
and the earnest and life-like expression of the saint vividly recall Foppa.
We have no certainty, however, that this fresco is by Bramantino, and some
years ago it passed as a work by Luini, having evidently belonged to the
same series as a St. Ursula by that master which also came from S. Maria
delle Vetere. All these works are now in the corridor of the Brera, and
every facility is thus afforded for close comparison. If the St. Martin is by
Bramantino it would prove conclusively that at some period he must have
been influenced by Foppa to a very decided extent.
This brief summary of painters well known in the history of art, most
certainly does not exhaust the list of Foppa's pupils and followers. That
the art of a great number of other contemporary painters in the Duchy of
Milan was largely determined and affected by the master is proved by
many existing works of the early Lombard school, though we have no
documentary evidence to enable us to connect these anonymous works with
any of the numerous Milanese painters of the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, who are known to us by name only ; but one other master may be
mentioned here, who though belonging to a more developed period of art than
that of Vincenzo Foppa, nevertheless owed more perhaps than we might at
first be disposed to admit to the pre-Leonardesque school of Lombardy,
namely, Bernardino Luini ; we have already alluded to the connection with
Foppa seen in the Pieta in S. Maria della Passione^ at Milan, which many
critics have ascribed to Luini," and to the fact that Foppa's Adoration of the
Magi in the National Gallery contains elements which are seen later and
in a more developed form in the compositions of Luini ;
while many minor
traits which we have found typical in the works of the Brescian painter are met
with also in the Milanese master even in his late period.
Too little is known of the history of Luini and of his artistic training for us
to hazard any opinion as to how this relation between the two painters is
to be
explained ; whether it was due in the first instance to the direct teaching of
Foppa or to that of his pupil Bergognone, who was considered by Morelli to
1
Chap, vii, pp. 206, 207.
"
Morelli, III, 146; Sandor Lederer, op. cif., 27, etc. Against the attribution to
Luini see H. F. Cook, op. cif., LXVII, and G. C. Williamson, B. Luini, 16, i. The
picture is extremely puzzling, it must be admitted, with its conflicting elements of the
earlier and later schools, and Luini's authorship appears to us by no means certain.
A manifest link with the Leonardesque school is the figure of St. John the Evangelist,
which recalls a St. Catherine at Munich ascribed by Morelli to Solario, and by Mr.
Berenson to some painter between Boltraffio and Melzi {North Italian Painters,
p. 260).