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

Chap. X. LOMBARDO-MILANESE PICTURES 255
have been the first
master of Luini/ but in any case the latter must have been
intimately acquainted with the works of Foppa, and must often, especially in
his later years, have returned to a study of compositions by the leading
master of the early school. In this connection it is not without importance to
remember that Bianconi, as already stated,^ ascribed to Luini a St. Roch in the
Chapel of St. Sebastian in S. Maria di Brera, where Foppa painted one of his
most celebrated works, while earlier Milanese writers attributed all the frescoes
in this chapel to Foppa.'
The Brera, the Ambrosiana, the Poldi, and many private collections and
churches in Milan and its territory afford abundant proof of the influence of
Foppa, and even in those numerous works where the Leonardesque element is
already dominant we often unexpectedly enough find an echo of the earlier
school. Thus the Crucifixion, formerly in the Church of S. Angelo,* which
now hangs in the Brera, on the same wall as Foppa's altarpiece, in spite of
its evident striving to adopt the new methods and to reproduce Leonardesque
motives—especially in the landscape and in the group of horsemen in the
middle distance—reverts again in many particulars to the tendencies of
Foppesque art ; the three central figures, for example, in pose and gesture
being coarse and exaggerated imitations of the figures in the Bergamo
Crucifixion.'
This blending of Leonardesque tendencies with types and viotives in vogue
among the painters of the earlier school is seen also in the much discussed
altarpiece of S. Ambrogio ad Nemus (now Brera)," and in the Circumcision
in the Louvre, with saints and a kneeling donor ^—according to the inscription
Frate Giacomo Lampugnani, Superior of the Umiliati—and bearing, in
addition to the date 1491,
the monogram X.L., which no one has thus far been
1
Mor., op. cit., 135, 146; cf. aXsoJhrb. d. Oest. Ksmmlg., XXVI, p. 367.
2 Chap. VI.
' From this we might infer either that the St. Roch, if by Foppa, was of the type
which we associate with his softer mood, or if by Luini, that it was founded upon a
Foppesque type of this character, for like Bergognone, Luini was attracted by this
aspect of Foppa's art rather tlian by those sterner quaHties which we more readily
associate with the name of the leading master of the Lombard school.
* Mongeri, op. cit., p. 262. Malaguzzi, Cat. Brera, p. 181. Reproduced Rass.,
1907, p. 169.
^
Hence the reason, perhaps, of Caffi's attribution to Foppa himself of the Crucifixion
of S. Angelo. Another picture connected with the S. Angelo Crucifixion is in the
New York Museum (Bryan Coll.), reproduced Rass,, 1907, p. 42.
^ The Madonna and Child with the four Fathers of the Church and the donors
Ludovicoand Beatrice Sforza with their two sons.
Zenale, Bernardino de' Conti, Ambrogio de Predis, and others.
^
Ascribed successively to Buttinone,
Variously attributed to Bramante, Bramantino, Civerchio, and Zenale.