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

Chap. II. FRESCOES IN S. TOMMASO 35
The chapel is now dedicated to St. Apollonia, and the only relic of the
original foundation is the stone commemorating Bonifacio de' Torti, which is
still in its place before the altar. The present altarpiece, representing
St. Apollonia and other saints with the Madonna and Child in glory, is the
one seen by Bartoli' in the eighteenth century, and according to Prelini' was
painted by Michelangelo Pellini in 1664, by order of Damiano de' Torti. No
trace of Foppa's work or of the inscription recording it is to be found now ;
it must have disappeared during one of the processes of restoration and
remodernization to which this chapel has been frequently subjected.
Another lost work, frescoes from the life of the Blessed Isnardo of Vicenza
in the Dominican Church of S. Tommaso at Pavia, of which up till now we
have only had a vague record, may be mentioned here, though we have no
clue as to the date of their production. The earliest authority who mentions
them is Borselli (Hieronymus Albertucci called Borselli), a Dominican of
Bologna who wrote in the last decade of the fifteenth century, and among
whose unpublished MSS.—formerly in the Convent of S. Domenico at
Bologna and now in the University Library in that city—was a life of the
Beato Isnardo.' Speaking of the burial place of the saint he says: "He
now lies in the Convent of S. Tommaso within the city of Pavia in the . . .
chapel painted by the hand of that great artist master Vincenzo of Brescia."*
Towards the end of the fourteenth century the Rectors of the University,
Tommaso,
desiring to have a chapel in this church, applied to the Prior of S.
and in 1392 the finest chapel then existing in the building, that of the
B. Isnardo, was granted them, and was then rededicated to St. Catherine of
Alexandria, the Patroness of the University.^ More than half a century must
^ Notizia delle pitture, etc. ,
p. 7.
' "7/ Tempio di S. Maria del Carmine" in Alman. Sacr., 1878, p. 271.
* The B. Isnardo (d. 1 244) had been the means of establishing the Dominican order at
Pavia in the early thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth, after many vicissitudes, the
friars of the order were allowed to establish themselves at S. Tommaso. They then
set about rebuilding the church, which eventually, owing to the munificence of the
Folperti, the Bottigella, and other great Pavian families, became one of the most magnificent
churches of the city. The first chapel erected in the church was dedicated to the
B. Isnardo, and hither his body was removed from S. Andrea de' Real! (whither it had
in turn been transported from S. Maria di Nazaret) and enshrined in a tomb of Verona
marble. His portrait, by Tommaso da Modena, is in the refectory of the Dominican
Monastery at Treviso.
^ " Nunc jacet in Conventu S. Thomae intra Papiam in capella . . . depincta per
manum magistri Vincentii Brixiensis magni pictoris," quoted by Pio, Nobile Progenie
di S. Domenico, Lib. II, p. 393. See also Leandro Alberti, De Viris Illustribus, Lib. V,
189-90; Maiocchi, La chiesa di S. Tommaso, pp. 142, 143, etc.
''
Bossi, Memories, f. 33, and Chiese, f.
777.