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

Chap. II. ALTARPIECE FOR ABBOT OF MORIMONDO 33
by the donor, Battista Malctta/ Abbot of Morimondo (a Cistercian abbey
between Pavia and Milan), not only to paint the whole chapel in fresco,' but
also to provide the altarpiece, the subject of which Don Pictro Moiraghi
went so far as to endeavour to reconstruct,^ thus making two works by Foppa
out of Bossi's notice.
With these views we cannot agree. The Chapel of S. Bernardino was
not founded by the Abbot of Morimondo, and the inscription recorded by
Bossi certainly did not refer to a work originally painted for this chapel, for
we gather from an inscription still preserved there that the chapel and altar
dedicated to SS. Bernardino of Siena and John the Evangelist were a foundation
of Bonifazio de' Torti, who died on November 22, 1454. According to
the terms of his will, dated March 3, 1454, he left all his possessions to the
Hospital of St. Matthew at Pavia, providing that out of this bequest his
heirs were to found and endow this chapel, the rights of patronage being
assured to the de' Torti family in perpetuity.*
The Abbot Maletta had therefore no part nor lot in this foundation, and
Foppa's work, which we know from the inscription to have been produced for
him, could have had no connection originally with the Chapel of S. Bernardino.
But how then could Bossi, in the first half of the seventeenth century,
have seen a picture there with the names of the painter and of the Abbot
Maletta inscribed upon it? The facts, hitherto wrongly explained by art
historians, become perfectly clear if we turn to the Official Report of the
Apostolic Visitation of Monsignor Peruzzi,^ who in 1576 had been sent by
'
Maletta, who belonged to a noble Pavian family, was, on the recommendation of
the Pope, made Abbot of Morimondo by Francesco Sforza in 1451, a post which he
held until his death in September, 1462 (see Indice Registri Ducali, Arch, di Stato,
Milan, fol. 143 v., anno 145 1, November 24). For other notices relating to Maletta see
Ughelli, Italia Sacra, IV, 144 ; Arch. Stor. Lamb., i88i, 628 ; Robolini, Notisie Storiche
di Pavia, III,
261, etc.
-
Calvi, Notizie, etc., II, p. 63, and Cr. and Cav., op. cit., II, 5.
^ Alman. Sacr., p. 335.
*
The stone covering the vault of Bonifazio de' Torti is on the floor of the chapel in
front of the altar, and bears the following inscription :
" Hoc est sepulcrum nobilis viri
Bonifacii de Tortis qui decessit de anno curso MCCCCLIIII die 22 Nov. quod una cum
ista capella fieri fecerunt agentes pro Hospitali novo Papie tamquam heredes ipsius
Bonifatii." (This is the tomb of the noble Bonifacio de' Torti, who died on November
22, 1454, which the administrators of the new hospital at Pavia, as the heirs of the said
Bonifacio, erected together with this chapel.) A copy of the will is preserved in a MS.
of the University Library at Pavia, a Register of S. Maria del Carmine entitled Liber
diet lis Rubens, No. 47, f. 30.
^ A MS. preserved in the Episcopal Curia at Pavia.
D