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

48 VINCENZO FOPPA
reproduction of it extant ; it figured upon the golden cup presented by the
citizens to Isabella of Aragon on her marriage with Gian Galeazzo Sforza ; on
the bell of the Torre del Comune ; on the banner of the city ; in woodcuts of
early printed books from the press of Jacopo de Borgofranco, and in countless
other examples. According to Petrarch, the statue was a masterpiece of
art,' and it would naturally have appealed to the painters and sculptors of the
day, who adapted it for their own works.- Leonardo da Vinci himself studied
it for his equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza ; Amadeo introduced it on the
fa9ade of the Certosa and in the background of one of his sculptures in the
Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo f Bernardino Colombani represented it in a
medallion on the front of his altarpiece in the Carmine at Pavia ; and Foppa
has given us reminiscences of it in works of his early and of his latest
period.
The date of the drawing of the Justice of Trajan would certainly coincide
with that of the paintings in the Medici Bank, and if Foppa actually treated
the subject in the loggia, it is not improbable that in this sketch we may have
his design for that composition,^ From this point of view the value of the
Berlin drawing is greatly enhanced, for it would then, with the fresco in the
Wallace Collection, be the only surviving relic of the compositions in
the Palace of Via de' Bossi. The same subject treated with much greater
'
Regisol '— '
Ruling the Sun '— because, according to tradition, it imitated the rotation
of the sun by means of a mechanical or magical contrivance." ("Que statua cum
repercussione solis mirabillter radiet et quia forte sic etiam antiquitus radiabat,
Radisol ab incolis appellatur, quasi radius solis : vel dicitur Regisol, quasi regens
solem, eo quod sicut fertur, antiquitus artificioso vel incantato motu, girum solis imitabatur."
See Anoniin. Ticinens., p. i8, ed. Maiocchi and Quintavalle, 1903.)
1 See Lett. Sen., Lib. V, lett. i, p. 264.
-
The statue was said, by various Pavian writers, to be of Marcus Aurelius, and to
have been brought from Ravenna to Pavia ; but it more probably represented Theodoric.
It was of gilded bronze, and the pose of the figure and of the horse must have
closely resembled the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol. It stood in the Piazza Piccola
at Pavia, which was called from the statue Piazza del Regisole, and is seen in Colombani's
fresco of 1522. During the sack of Pavia by Lautrec in 1527 it was carried off
together with the golden gates of the Porta Palacense ;
but at Cremona it was stopped,
and by the aid of the Cremonese was sent back to Pavia and set up in its original place.
But the statue so beloved by the Pavians, and so jealously guarded that any one injuring
it in early times was severely punished, in 1796 fell a prey to the mob; it was
dragged from its place with ropes and terribly mutilated, and in 1809, to the eternal
disgrace of the Pavians, was broken up and sold as old metal (see Maiocchi, Un
Vessillo di Pavia . . e la Statua del Regisole).
^ Reproduced, Meyer, op. cit., p. 280.
* The drawing is pricked for transfer, and was undoubtedly the sketch for a more
elaborate cartoon.