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

264 VINCENZO FOPPA
certainly by another hand showing some affinity with Foppa in
the forms, but
differing from him in type, expression, and colouring. It is the work of a
painter of distinct individuality nearly connected with the author of the Pieta
in S. Giovanni Evangelista, and of the Madonna in the collection of Cav.
Liannazza. The whole altarpiece is one of the most interesting examples of
the transitional school known to us.
Among other paintings at Brescia ascribed variously to Zoppo, Foppa,
and Ferramola, may be mentioned the picture hanging over the altar of
St. Jerome in S. Maria delle Grazie,' the Procession to Calvary in S. Pietro in
Castello,^ numerous paintings in the gallery, in the sacristy of S. Maria della
Consolazione, in the Church of S. Giulia (now Museo Cristiano), in the
lower Church of S. Salvatore and elsewhere. Many of these examples, like
the series in S. Maria Solario,^ have been entirely modernized and do not
therefore come under consideration at all, but in those which have preserved
anything of their original character the dominant influence is that of the
painters
of the transitional group, though a connection with the earlier school
is occasionally apparent.* We are forced therefore to the conclusion that the
influence of Foppa, which must have been paramount at Brescia in the last
decade of the fifteenth century, was neither deeply rooted nor enduring. It
was in the nature of things that the older school should be forced to yield
to the influx of new tendencies. "All art like human labour," it has been
well said, "is continuous, one generation carries on what its predecessor
began . . . and each generation must not only add to but preserve the
^
This picture has little connection with Ferramola, but seems more nearly related to
the earlier work of Savoldo.
^ Evidently by the same hand is a small and very attractive picture representing the
Holy Family with the little St. John, which was shown at the Brescian Exhibition of
1878 (see the Catalogue No. iii) under the name of Vincenzo Foppa the younger,
and now belongs to the ex-Governor of Erythrea, Ferdinando Martini, to whom we
are indebted for a photograph of the picture.
The influence in this picture and in that
of S. Pietro in Castello, as well as in other works in Brescian churches ascribed to
"Vincenzo Foppa the younger," is evidently that of Calisto Piazza, the follower of
Romanino.
5 In their present condition these frescoes, in spite of the date 1518, are works of the
nineteenth century, that is of the era of restoration.
* This connection with the earlier school is seen, as already noted, in certain
groups of angels in a chapel of the Church of S. Salvatore, in a Crucifixion with saints
in the same chapel, and in other examples ; for instance, in the wholly repainted fresco
in the Oratory of S. Maria della Consolazione representing the Madonna and Child
between SS. Roch and Sebastian. The type of the Madonna is founded upon that of
Foppa in the Brera fresco of 1485, the angels are imitated from Bergognone, and the
St. Sebastian also shows a certain connection with Lombard art, but the remainder is
absolutely modern.