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

Cap. II. JUSTICE OF TRAJAN, DRAWING AT BERLIN 47
which Dante describes as sculptured on the mountain of Purgatory,' and
which, according to M. Gaston Paris, had its origin in some antique basrehef
representing a conquered province.^
We are the more inclined to this view because of the existence of a most
interesting drawing formerly in the collection of Herr v. Beckerath and now
in the Print Room at Berlin, one of the rare drawings which may with some
probability be assigned to Foppa. It is true that Professor Adolfo Venturi,
who reproduced it in the Archivio dell' Arte,' ascribed it to the early time of
Ercole Roberti, while the late M. Eugene Muntz, who was the first to recognize
the meaning of the composition as the " Justice of Trajan,"^ attributed it to
Jacopo Bellini, with whom it is undoubtedly connected/ Many types are
borrowed from Jacopo, but the figures for the most part are cast in the heavier
and more solid mould which early became characteristic of Foppa ; the horses
are of a build constantly met with in North Italian art at this date, both in
painting and in sculpture.® A comparison between this drawing and Foppa's
picture in the English National Gallery is most instructive. The picture was
most probably painted many years after the drawing was produced, yet in
many particulars Foppa, the most conservative of painters, has in this, one of
his latest works, returned to the impressions of his youth. The figure on
horseback on the left in the drawing is closely connected with a figure in
a similar position in the picture ; the fragment of an arch slightly indicated in
the drawing as the background to this figure is in the picture elaborated into
a ruin such as we see in the works of the later painters of the Milanese
school ; the structure and feeling of the hands is similar in both drawing and
picture, and the treatment of the horses in the latter shows that towards the
close of his life he still reverted to the impressions received in the workshops
of Verona and Venice.^ The pose and movement of the horse on the left in
the drawing, involuntarily recall the pose of the Regisole, the equestrian
statue which for centuries had been so intimately bound up with the life of the
Pavians as to be often spoken of by writers as the emblem and palladium of
the city.^
* Canto X, 70.
It was engraved upon the seal of the Commune of Pavia— the earliest
^
Sat Melanges piiblies par PEcole des Hautes-Etudes, 1878.
'
1889, p. 359.
*
La Legende de Trajan, Extrait de la Revue des Traditions populaires, p. 5, 1892.
* Ascribed to Jacopo Bellini also by Professor Boni, op. cit., p. 14.
^ See Weiszacker, Jahrbuch der K. Preussischen Kunstsammhingen, Vol. VII, on
the subject of the horse in Italian art.
'
Weiszacker, op. cit., pp. 49, 53, 159, for the horses of Pisanello and Jacopo Bellini.
* The Anonifno Ticinese gives us the origin of the name: "This statue, because it
shines with wonderful lustre, reflecting the rays of the sun, and because it probably did
so also in former times, is called ' Radisol ' by the people, that is, 'Sunrays' or