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

40 VINCENZO FOPPA
Ambrogio del Conte in 1464 was furnishing the columns for the "portico
verso S. Nazzaro."'
From Filarete's Trattato we are able to form some idea of the position
and subjects of Poppa's frescoes. In Book XI he devotes several pages to
discussing the plan and methods to be followed in erecting a hospital (ostensibly
in
the imaginary city of Sforzinda), and he gives an elaborate sketch of
the building.^ The frescoes in the hospital at Sforzinda were to be painted,
he states, in the colonnade, like those in the hospital at Milan, which were
painted "in the colonnade in front" ("nello portico della parte dinanzi "), by
which we assume he may have meant the outer colonnade which surrounded
the building on three sides towards the street. A good idea of this is given
in various reproductions of the Milanese hospital as it was in the early sixteenth
century.' It seems probable, therefore, that Poppa's frescoes were in
the colonnade on the north-west side, the "portico principale verso Cascinotto,
" which between 1463 and 1464 might have been ready to receive
paintings, but could scarcely have been so earlier.
Pilarete then proceeds to give an account of the subjects treated, which
represented the ceremonies attending the laying of the stone. The most
important incident was the procession, headed by the Archbishop and clergy,
with Prancesco and Bianca Maria Sforza and their children, among whom he
specially notes Galeazzo, Ippolita, and Pilippo Maria. They were attended
by a large retinue of courtiers, many of whom he mentions by name ; hence
this fresco must have been a very interesting historical document, containing
a great number of contemporary portraits. In the composition
representing the laying of the stone were depicted Prancesco Sforza, the
Archbishop, and Pilarete himself. These subjects, with other minor incidents,
were all painted by order of the Duke, and were executed, Pilarete adds, in
a praiseworthy manner by good masters ; and the building was shown to the
Duke's visitors as one of the finest in the land, all who saw it being well
pleased with it. Prom the way in which Pilarete and Vasari mention these
paintings it is clear that they were frescoes ; but De Pagave, in a note to
Vasari's Life of Filarete,^ put forward the idea that they were painted on
' See Canetta for all these points: Cronologia delV Ospedale, 1884; Cenui sul-
VOspitale Maggiore, 1885; Ele^tco de' Benefattori, etc., 1887; Meyer, op. cit., I, p. 79
and foil. ; Malaguzzi in Italienische Forschungen, I, 1906; and Munoz, op. cit., p. 198-
202.
^ Oett., pp. 363-71, and Munoz, plate 7, for Filarete's sketch.
'
See especially Gilinus, Hist. Fiindationis Hospitalis Magni JSIediolani, frontispiece
(and chap, vi for a long account of the building) ; Cesare Cesariano, Di L. Vitinivio
Pollione " Z)e Architectural Lib. VI, p. 99, and others.
* IV, p. 342, ed. 1808.