Maurilio Lovatti
The Nativity of Jesus by Vincenzo Foppa (1492)
Vincenzo Foppa (born in Brescia between 1427 and 1430, died in
Brescia between 1515 and 1516) is undoubtedly one of the greatest Italian
painters of the 15th century, a major figure in the Lombard Renaissance.
Between 1456 and 1458, Foppa took up residence in Pavia, in the Duchy
of Milan, ruled by the Sforza family, where he remained more or less
permanently with his family until 1490. In addition to Pavia, he painted in Milan,
Bergamo, and Liguria. His fame is primarily linked to the cycle
of murals commissioned by Pigello Portinari, a Florentine nobleman and
representative of the Milanese Medici Bank, for the chapel of St. Peter
Martyr of Verona in the church of St. Eustorgio in Milan. This is
one of the major pictorial undertakings of the Italian fifteenth century, in
which the search for an effective scenography, typical of Lombard taste, is
evident, which seems to anticipate the research into optical illusionism of
the seventeenth century.
In 1490, now in his sixties and at the height of his fame, Vincenzo
Foppa returned to Brescia, which had been part of the Republic of Venice
since 1426, and remained there until his death. He settled in the
Sant'Alessandro district, specifically at what is now Via Fratelli Lombardi,
at no. 10. On 18 December 1489 he was appointed painter of the city, with an
annual salary of 100 lire paid to him by the Municipality of Brescia
until 1495. In the last years of the century and in the ones
immediately following, that is in the so-called period of old age, Foppa
painted in Brescia the polyptych of San Nicola da Tolentino
for the church of San Barnaba, now in the civic Pinacoteca Tosio
Martinengo of Brescia, the altarpiece of the Merchants, now also in the
Pinacoteca, the polyptych of the Blessed Sacrament for the homonymous
chapel of San Pietro de Dom (the church that then stood where
the Duomo Nuovo is today) dismembered in 1604, when the old basilica was
demolished, and the polyptych of Santa Maria delle Grazie, for
the basilica of the same name. Also in those years, Foppa painted the famous
Lamentation over the Dead Christ for the Dominican church of San
Pietro in Gessate in Milan, later purchased by the King of Prussia Frederick
William III in 1821, but destroyed during the bombing of Berlin in 1945.
Also from this period is the Adoration of the Magi, now in the National
Gallery in London, in some ways his most spectacular work.
Also during his time in Brescia, and more precisely around 1492, Foppa
painted the Nativity of Jesus, now in Chiesanuova (a district
of Brescia), sometimes also called the Adoration of the Child or
Madonna and Child. The painting, in tempera and gold on wood, is not
large (175 x 84 cm). It was likely part of a triptych comprising two panels
with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Apollonia, which ended
up on the antiques market and are now preserved in the Pinacoteca Tosio
Martinengo in Brescia.
Doubts about the painting's attribution to Foppa, which had been raised by
some scholars in previous decades, have been resolved, and we now know that
the Chiesanuova Nativity was painted entirely by the Brescian painter,
except perhaps for Saint Joseph's golden cloak, which was completed by a
disciple of his school. The panel underwent an initial restoration in 1946
and a more complete one in 1990 in Giuliano Scalvini's laboratory in
Brescia. This included not only cleaning the surfaces, filling in the gaps,
and retouching the paint, but also consolidating and disinfecting the wooden
support. Following this last restoration and the loan of the painting to the
major exhibition in Brescia on Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo (1480-1548), Foppa's
panel, returned to the parish of Chiesanuova on March 27, 1991, was placed
in the new church for safety reasons, with the authorization of the
competent Superintendency for Artistic and Historic Heritage of Mantua (dating
back to September 10, 1987). A copy of the same size was placed on the altar
of the Madonna delle Grazie in the old church. Subsequent diagnostic
studies of both the Chiesanuova painting and the two side panels of the
triptych, conducted in 2001 and 2018 (the latter also using infrared light),
are compatible with the hypothesis that in the original composition, Saint
John and Saint Apollonia were placed to the left and right, respectively, of
the central panel. These studies also showed how Foppa, during the execution
of the painting, slightly modified the position of the Madonna's hands and
the upper part of the building in the lunette. According to another possible
hypothesis (based on the shape of the hill in the background of the side
panels), both Saint Apollonia and Saint John would have been to the left of
the central panel of the polyptych, while the two right panels are missing.
The Nativity demonstrates Foppa's deep religious feeling, translated into a
familiar language; some scholars believe the usual gravity of his pictorial
style is likely softened by the Brescian painter's relationship with the
Venetian Giovanni Bellini at the time, without detracting from the
profoundly Lombard influence that emerges from his interest in naturalism,
influenced by Flemish influences. The painting as a whole features a simple
yet majestic architecture, shrouded in delicate shadow. The landscape behind
the Holy Family is bright and lively, yet conveys a sense of subdued
serenity. Scholars believe it bears similarities to the landscapes in the
frescoes Foppa had painted a few years earlier (between 1488 and 1489) in
the Franciscan church of Santa Maria al Giardino della Scala in
Milan (closed for worship in 1810 and demolished in 1865). The
Chiesanuova panel, which is better preserved than the two side panels,
depicts a suggestive image, in which the play of light, the depiction of the
figures (especially Mary's face), and the rich chromatic draperies are still
appreciable today. In particular, the Madonna's face and the position of her
hands reveal a serene and reflective state of mind, as if the artist wanted
to convey to us that the Virgin was still considering and pondering in her
heart the words of the Angel at the moment of the Annunciation, while she
contemplates at her feet, stretched out on the hem of her robe, a Child too
small and distant from her, already marked on his flesh and face by the
signs of time and suffering. The position of Jesus, lying on the ground on
the hem of his cloak, recalls the Adoration of the Child with Saint
Benedict and Angels painted by Foppa almost fifteen years earlier,
in 1478, now held by the Institute of Arts in Detroit (Michigan,
USA), after having traveled to Versailles and New York. Unlike the
Detroit painting, however, the landscape in the Chiesanuova panel is less
academic, perhaps more realistic despite its less detail, and certainly more
vibrant, with the dog intent on herding the flock and the light seemingly
falling diagonally through the humid morning air. The figure of Joseph, with
a silent and stern expression, is placed to the side and appears almost
ready to exit the scene. Obviously, when interpreting the painting, we must
keep in mind that paintings at the time had an educational function, since
the people were largely illiterate, and aimed to communicate the truths of
faith in an understandable way and through representations.
There
is no certain information about the original destination of Foppa's triptych,
nor about the provenance of the central panel at the time of its transfer to
Chiesanuova. Scholars initially hypothesized that the work was created for
the Collegiate Church of Saints Nazaro and Celso. However, careful
research conducted in the early 1990s on the pastoral visitation reports
preserved in the Diocesan Historical Archive, the archives of the parish
church of Via Matteotti, and the State Archives of Brescia, Milan,
and Venice (research conducted in particular by Rossana Prestini in
preparation for the publication of the history of the church of Saints
Nazaro and Celso, which was published in 1992) definitively ruled out this
hypothesis: no mention of Vincenzo Foppa's triptych has been found.
Since 2003, Stefania Buganza has advanced a new and more plausible
hypothesis, albeit one lacking conclusive support. Noting some subtle hints
of immaculate art in Foppa's painting, the scholar has hypothesized that the
work originally came from the church of San Francesco d'Assisi
in Brescia. Indeed, the Franciscans, both in the late Middle Ages and
after the Council of Trent, were the most ardent supporters of the theory of
the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, which would only be accepted
as a dogma of the Church by Pope Pius IX in 1854, culminating a
centuries-long history of popular devotion and theological disputes. The
Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus (1265-1308), a professor at
the universities of Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and Cologne, had formulated
solid and complex theological and philosophical arguments in support of the
thesis of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and the Franciscans
subsequently became the most convinced supporters and propagators of this
thesis. In this context, in the second half of the 15th century, the
Franciscans created the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, in the
left aisle of the church of their convent in Brescia. In 1603, a painting by
Grazio Cossali (1563-1629) was placed as the altarpiece of this chapel,
also a Nativity (similar to Foppa's in the presence of St. John the
Baptist and St. Apollonia), replacing a previous painting, the name of which,
however, is not cited in the report of the pastoral visit of 1580. Stefania
Buganza hypothesizes that this was the original location of Foppa's Nativity.
If this hypothesis were true, it would answer the question of who
commissioned the work (the Franciscans) and its original location (the
church of San Francesco d'Assisi in Brescia), but obviously it would tell us
nothing about when and how it came to Chiesanuova. It certainly arrived in
Chiesanuova before 1821, when the altar of the Blessed Virgin of Grace,
where it was located, was mentioned for the first time in the aforementioned
pastoral visit of Bishop Gabrio Maria Nava, which took place on May
27, 1821. More likely, it may have arrived in 1809-1810, when the
work on this altar was completed. Hypothetically, the painting could have
arrived in Chiesanuova even earlier, in the final decades of the eighteenth
century, to be placed on the altar of the Madonna delle Grazie around 1810,
due to renovations begun in 1786; However, this hypothesis appears highly
unlikely and, above all, undocumented in any way.
Even if we accept the Buganza hypothesis, a question remains: where was the
work located between 1603 and 1810? Giovanni Battista Carboni
(1725-1790) published a book in 1760 containing a detailed inventory of the
paintings and sculptures publicly exhibited in Brescia, within the perimeter
of the Venetian walls. Carboni cites a single Nativity by Vincenzo Foppa, at
the altar of the Oratory of San Nicola, a small church located in Tresanda
San Nicola (a crossroads of Corso Martiri della Libertà), later
deconsecrated during the Napoleonic era and finally demolished. From the
description of this painting, however, we can absolutely exclude the
possibility that it was the Chiesanuova panel, both because Carboni
specifies that the upper lunette was not by Foppa, but added later (while
the shape and dimensions of the Chiesanuova panel certainly remained
unchanged from 1492), and because the Tresanda San Nicola painting also
depicted Saint Nicholas of Tolentino.
So if Foppa's Nativity wasn't in a church or other publicly accessible
location, where was it? Where was it in the 17th and 18th centuries? How
and why did it end up in Chiesanuova? These are all questions to which the
available studies so far fail to provide answers. Perhaps they are questions
destined to remain unanswered. However, it cannot be ruled out that in the
future, some other document will be found in the archives that could dispel
or resolve our doubts.
hypothesis of reconstruction of the original triptych by Vincenzo Foppa
- Vincenzo Foppa on Treccani - Dizionario biografico degli italiani (in italian)
- Vincenzo Foppa on Wikipedia