Italian painter, the leading figure in Lombard painting until the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan in 1481⁄2. He was born and died in Brescia, but was active mainly in Milan. According to Vasari he obtained his training in Padua, and his robust style owed much to Mantegna, not least in his interest in perspective. His major works include frescos in S. Eustorgio, Milan, and Sta Maria del Carmine, Brescia.
The origin of this panel is not known, it was installed in its current location only in the nineteenth century. Its disarming simplicity is different from the Bramantesque quality of other works by Foppa. The panel probably belonged to a larger altarpiece.
Formerly in Santa Maria delle Grazie at Bergamo, it was removed to the Brera in 1811. The predella and the crowning panel were acquired from the Albani collection in 1811. It is not certain that the predella and the crowning element originally formed part of the same altarpiece; and the accuracy of the entire reconstruction is in doubt. The panels are the following:
Central panel: Madonna and Child (165 x 80 cm); side panels: Sts Jerome, Alexander, Vincent, Anthony (137 x 39 cm each); upper side panels: Sts Clare, Bonaventura, Louis, Bernardino (126 x 40 cm each); upper centralaa panel: St Francis (128 x 82 cm); predella panels showing scenes from the Life of Christ (87 x 30 cm each) and two Angels in Adoration (27 x 29 cm each).
This altarpiece belongs to Foppa’s early stylistic maturity and retains the archaising tendency toward simplification of his youthful period, before he was influenced by Leonardo and Bramante. It also shows the pungent impetuosity of Mantegna’s influence in the sharply drawn perspective, and in the tension and almost metallic consistency of the forms. In this resplendent altarpiece, the central panels are particularly fine examples of Foppa’s masterly interweaving of colour and light. The Madonna’s face, lightly thrown into relief, concludes a series of circling motifs enhanced by the elegant twist of the body of the Child, as he leans over to pluck the string of the lute. In the panel above, St Francis appears as a motionless, somewhat astonished figure immersed in the limpid air of a lyric landscape.
Foppa and Mantegna studied together in Padua and Foppa went on to become the first important Renaissance painter in Lombardy. Working in Milan still dominated by International Gothic, Foppa painted the frescoes in the Portinari Chapel in S. Eustorgio (1468). His panel paintings and altarpieces reveal his knowledge of perspective and a melancholy seen in the delicate use of chiaroscuro. Apart from his work in Milan, Foppa was active in Pavia and in Liguria and molded painting throughout north-western Lombardy. His style, influenced by Mantegna, combines grace and realism.
The relation of Foppa’s earliest dated work, the Crucifixion, to Quattrocento art elsewhere is clear. The embracing arch and imperial profile portraits in the spandrels show his adaptation of classicised architecture and motifs. The pose of the bad thief and the treatment of the background landscape betray a knowledge of Jacopo Bellini. The muscular vigour of the bodies and the violence of the expressions and poses, however, are typical of Foppa. The expressive impact of the scene evolves from the manner in which he contrasts the suffering of the two thieves with the calm serenity of the figure of Christ.
In this resplendent altarpiece, the central panels are particularly fine examples of Foppa’s masterly interweaving of colour and light. The Madonna’s face, lightly thrown into relief, concludes a series of circling motifs enhanced by the elegant twist of the body of the Child, as he leans over to pluck the string of the lute.
Inscribed “MCCCCLXXXV DIE X OCTVBR” on the lower fillet of the parapet, originally in the sacristy of S. Maria di Brera, it was removed in 1808 when the church was dismantled. The fresco was formerly attributed to Bramantino.
This fresco is fundamental to Foppa’s career. The simple surface divisions of his earlier work have been replaced by representations of fully three-dimensional architecture. The grandiose barrel vault of sculptured profiles, set in medallions in the tympanums, shows the influence of Bramante. The fullness of the compositional forms and their spectacular effect, as well as the triumphant character of the Madonna, reveal Foppa’s intimate lyric qualities. His lyricism is seen at its strongest in the harmonies of subdued blues, reds and greens, and in the silvery chiaroscuro of Mary’s face, which is a miraculous transformation of light into substance.
The most recent studies have revealed that Foppa’s cultural background, initially though to be Paduan, was fundamentally Lombard. The artist, who had an eventful life, was highly esteemed by the Sforza family, and was a prot�g� of Duke Galeazzo Maria.
The Madonna and Child with an Angel is a revealing expression of Foppa’s complex cultural personality. The space in which the figures are inserted - clearly North European in character, with the little window providing light and the typical Flemish window-sill - is undoubtedly a spiritual space, one which invites us to enter ethically into the painting. Foppa then delineates his subject with clear, sharp colour tones, constructing the planes of the composition with a forceful and essential line.
This is a wonderfully delicate early work. The small panel can be read almost as an experimental exercise, produced by an artist at the very start of his career. The geometrical frame is defined with precision and is enlivened by a beaded garland of the type used by Mantegna. Foppa is tentative but full of poetry in the way he portrays the Virgin and Child, who, unusually, is dressed in a Roman-style singlet - another borrowing from Mantegna, as is the Roman lettering on the surround. In the painting emotion is controlled, gesture is lightly drawn, tones are dull, flesh has a silvery gray quality. This is all part of Foppa’s constant attention to the quiet reality of everyday life. Foppa’s human realism was to become the basis upon which Lombard painting developed.
Highly illusionistic frescoes by Vincenzo Foppa bring the walls to life in the Portinari Chapel of the Sant’Eustorgio in Milan. Their primary subjects are the Annunciation and Scenes from the Life of St Peter Martyr. The picture shows the frescoes on the right wall of the chapel. In these frescoes Foppa cunningly exploits scientific perspective and clear, rich colour to place figures and architecture into deep illusionistic space. According to legend, the black thunder-cloud in the upper sky was a blessing to the crowd which had been suffering in the blazing August sun.
The scene on the left represents the saint preaching. Here the figures diminish in size according to their distance from the viewer and their reactions to his preaching are subtle and varied. On the right Peter Martyr steps up to an altar with the Eucharistic host in his hand to reveal what seems to be a statue of the Madonna and Child but is actually an idol.
This is one of the two independent portraits by Vincenzo Foppa which have come down to us, both from late in his career. However, several of his altarpieces contain memorable donor portraits.
The sitter of the present portrait was identified as Giovanni Francesco Brivio, member of a Milanese noble family which played an important role at the Sforza court.
This is a fragmentary portrait of an elderly man, probably painted late in Foppa’s career. The sitter’s costume and his dignified appearance suggest that he was a highly placed member of Lombard society.
The panel, formerly attributed to Ambrogio de Predis, was cut on all three sides save the upper edge, and painted additions were added at right and bottom in the nineteenth century.
Together with a matching panel of St Theodore, this was originally part of a polyptych in the church of the Carmine in Pavia. The refined way in which he painted the saint’s canonical dress brings to mind Proven�al and Flemish painting.
The church of San Maurizio was built between 1503 and 1518 inside the Monastero Maggiore, the convent of the Benedictine nuns. All surfaces of the single nave, the presbytery, the chapels and the vaults are covered by 16th-century frescoes executed by many artists, including Paolo Lomazzo, Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Boltraffio, and Vincenzo Foppa. The composite decorative scheme is in harmony with the Renaissance architecture of the church.
Foppa’s St Luke decorates the vault.
The panel constitutes one wing of a polyptych. Another wing representing St Stephen the Martyr is also in The Hermitage.
The inscription on the halo can be read as “Sanctus Mich.. angelus Inter…”. The visage of the saints shows similarities to those of other Foppa representations.
In its original position in a chapel in Santa Maria di Brera, this fresco had greater visual impact, with the archers appearing illusionistically before the spectator as if they had come out from behind the wall. For this reason the painting was admired and praised by art historians beginning with Lomazzo in the sixteenth century. Today the work appears somewhat laboured, the figures anatomically and physiognomically overdone, and the broad composition perhaps a little vacuous. One can, of course, still admire the technique and the masterly use of light, which defines the forms and gives them a silvery cast.
The panel constitutes one wing of a polyptych. Another wing representing St Michael Archangel is also in The Hermitage.
The inscription on the halo can be read as “Sanctus Stefanus Protomartirus”. The visage of the saints shows similarities to those of other Foppa representations.
This is the only surviving fresco fragment from the Palazzo Mediceo, Milan. It was cut from the wall c. 1863.
Stoical yet sad, Foppa’s Virgin and Child betrays traces of Gothic intensity but the powerfully blocked out forms of mother and Child point to new developments initiated by Fra Filippo Lippi and followed by Piero della Francesca and Mantegna. Here Mary and Jesus take on the roles of the new, redemptive Adam and Eve, symbolized by the Virgin holding a fruit for her Son’s taking.
In this painting there is a tender and somewhat melancholy contact between mother and child.
Framed by a window, a nice landscape without any human presence can be seen.
