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

Chap. I. PAINTERS AT MILAN 23
at the time when Foppa came to Pavia must be mentioned in the first place
the brothers Zavattari/ by whom we have one absolutely authentic work,
practically the most important existing example in North Italy of the early
Milanese school—the well-known series of frescoes in the Chapel of Queen
Teodolinda in the Cathedral at Monza, which in addition to the signature
bear the date 1444.
These frescoes may be taken as a criterion of the capacity of the
artists of that day and of the quality and tendencies of the pre-
Foppesque school of Lombardy, a school evidently still primitive in
character, full of charm in many respects, but incapable of freeing itself
from the traditional methods of the Pisanellesque period and of breaking
fresh ground, a school which must consequently be termed retrograde rather
than progressive.
Such also, we must assume, was the quality of the art practised by the
numerous other artists of the school of Milan prior to the advent of Vincenzo
Foppa, painters whose names are familiar to all students of Italian art, though
unfortunately few of them are represented by extant works in the present
day. All these artists, as we know from numerous documents, were painters
of renown in their day, and were for the most part independent before 1458 ;
hence when Foppa settled at Pavia, they must have been in the zenith of
their power and leading masters of the school which flourished at Milan and in
the surrounding territory. Among them may be mentioned Giacomino and
Costantino Zenoni da Vaprio, Zanetto Bugati, Cristoforo Moretto," Giacomo
Valperga, Gian Giacomo da Lodi, Giacomo Vismara, Melchiorre Lampugnano,
Gottardo Scotti,^ and others, and perhaps to this group of painters
who are known to have been working in 1458, we may add the names of those
with whom we have proof that Foppa was more or less connected in later
'
According to Calvi (II, 144, note i) the Zavattari in 1453 painted a chapel in the
Certosa of Pavia (see also Magenta, I, p. 108). A signed work by Gregorio Zavattari is
mentioned in the Arch. Stor. Loinbardo (VIII, p. 60) as in the Santuario of Corbetta,
and frescoes in the Church of Monzoro, near Cusago, are also ascribed to this family of
artists (Malaguzzi, Pittori Lombardi, p. 92). The frescoes in the cortile and in two rooms
on the ground floor of the Palazzo Borromeo (No. 7 Piazza Borromeo) at Milan
are ascribed by some to the Zavattari, whose authorship is certainly more probable than
that of Michelino, to whom these frescoes have also been attributed. Another work of
the Zavattari hitherto unknown in the history of art was executed in 1465, namely, the
ceiling frescoes of the Capella Maggiore of S. Vincenzo in Prato at Milan, of which we
have a detailed description in an interesting document of the Archivio Notarile in
that city (see Rivisia di scietize storiche, Pavia, July, 1908).
^
A signed work by him in the collection of Cav. Bassano Gabba at Milan.
^
By whom there are two signed works in the Poldi Museum and in the collection
of Avvocato Cologna at Milan. Cf. also Motta, \nArch. Stor. Lomb., June 1895, p. 411.