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

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34 VINCENZO FOPPA
Pope Gregory XIII to Pavia, to ascertain if the reforms decreed by the
Council of Trent had been duly carried out. His report reflected the greatest
credit on Ippolito de' Rossi, Bishop of the diocese (who has been called the
S. Carlo Borromeo of Pavia), for Peruzzi pronounced the diocese to be the
best regulated among all those which had come under his notice. In the
the principal churches and gave the most
course of his visitation he inspected
stringent commands for a general system of restoration and renovation,
chapels to be painted afresh and altarpieces to be restored ;
moreover, in some
cases the order was accompanied by the threat that if within six months the
patrons of the chapels had not attended to
these injunctions, they would be
liable to forfeit all the rights they had hitherto enjoyed in connection with
these chapels. The report is of great value for the light which it often sheds
upon the condition, at that period, of buildings and works of art at Pavia.
In this case we learn that when the Bishop visited the Church of the Carmine,
he found that the walls of the chapel, dedicated to St. Bernardino and
St. John the Evangelist, were not whitewashed and that the altar was denuded
of ornaments ; he ordered that these should be provided together with
a beautiful altarpiece (ycofia) with its curtain, etc.^ In consequence of these
peremptory orders the chapel must have been speedily provided with what was
lacking, and especially with an ancona, and we believe it was in obedience to
the Bishop's injunctions that Foppa's altarpiece of the Madonna - was placed
in the chapel by the de' Torti family. It must have been removed from an
altar dedicated by the Abbot Maletta in the Church of the Carmine by the
patrons of the Chapel of St.
Bernardino, who, to avert the danger of forfeiting
their rights, were, by some means which we are now unable to explain,
permitted to place the picture over their own altar.'
It was merely a chance circumstance, therefore, which led to its being in
this chapel when seen by Bossi in the seventeenth century, though the inscription
quoted by him proves indisputably that Vincenzo painted such a
picture for the Abbot Maletta.
* "Altare in capella sub titulo sanctorum Bernardini de Senis et Joannis Evangelistas,
quod dicitur esse illorum de Tortis, visum fuit denudatum et carere omnibus
ornamentis. Capella non est dealbata . . . Propterea ordinavit eidem altari provideri
de ycona pulchra cum sua cortina, etc." (Curia Vescovile di Pavia Liber Visitationis
ApostoliccB . . . anni i^y6, Vol. I, f. 316.)
2 It was dedicated "To the eternal honour of Christ's mother Mary" (see the
inscription, p. 32).
* In the volume of the Visitationis Apostolicce, f. 318 r., we find thirteen altars mentioned
in the Church of the Carmine which, by order of Monsignor Peruzzi, were all to be
removed because they were either outside the chapels, or were placed against the
pilasters or columns in the church. Possibly it was from one of these condemned altars
that Foppa's picture was taken.