CHAPTER XX

WHEREIN WE SEE THE MIGHTY GENIUS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI CREATE THE SCHOOL OF MILAN

LEAVING all that was mortal of the dead Leonardo da Vinci in France, to return to the Florence that bred him, it were well to stay our feet at Milan on the southward journeying, and gaze on the large endeavour that essayed to create the art of what is known as the Milanese School, under the magic sway or Leonardo, therefore but a part or the achievement of Florence.

Leonardo was a very Florentine, created by the spirit of Florence, the consummation of her genius in the fourteen-hundreds. Yet he created the greater part of his art, realised the fulness of his genius, outside Florence ; and it was in Milan that he came to his supreme fulfilment. Over Milan he cast all the glamour of his renown. His colossal personality dominated Milan, and was to cast its atmosphere over Florence, but over Milan he stood a very giant, and Lombardy grew to claim him as her own.

It is usual for writers to begin a dissertation upon the so-called School of Lomdardy, or of Milan, by vaunting it against the schools of Padua or Verona. As a matter of fact, what little school there was before Leonardo da Vinci made it but a part of the Florentine achievement, came out of Padua, the cradle of Venetian painting. Out of the famous Paduan school of Squarcione came a pupil to found a school of Milan, and known to fame as Foppa.

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FOPPA
1427?-1502

The founder of the so-called Milanese School of Painting, at any rate the head of the school, when Leonardo da Vinci came to the splendid Court of Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, was one VINCENZO FOPPA, whose art was founded upon that of the antique-loving SQUARCIONE, creator of the great school of Padua-Squarcione, collector of antiques, who was largely instrumental in creating the academic desire to copy antique art. Lombardy, 'tis true, had had her primitives before Foppa, mere mediocrities of Giottesques, yet, by reason of their being Giottesques, steeped in the Florentine atmosphere of Tuscany rather than what one might have expected, the rich-hued art of neighbouring Venice to their immediate east, strangely enough, since the Venetians were of the north, and separated as were the Lombards, from middle Italy by Italy's backbone of the Apennines.

Foppa was a fine colourist, and his art showed wide advance on the Milanese painters of his day, seeking to state atmospheric values in silvery harmonies instead of the more pattern-like employment of colours in spaced masses. In his later years he had the advantage of seeing the work of the great architect Bramante, who was also a painter, and had come to Milan out of Tuscany, still further bending the Milanese taste towards Florentine ideals in artistry. Bramante's chief fame is as architect, and his artistry is rather revealed through the genius of his follower Bramantino than by any of the very rare paintings by his own hand that have survived.

Foppa painted a large number of frescoes in Milan and its neighbourhood, but they have perished. The National [161] Gallery in London has, however, a large panel, the Adoration of the Magi, by him, which is an important painting long attributed to Bramantino, but now considered as characteristic of Foppa.

Foppa's pupil, Ambrogio da Fossano, better known as BORGOGNONE (born about 1450 and dying in 1523), showed also the subtle sense of cool, grey harmonies, and his art has the distinction that comes of deep spirituality and tenderness, wrought with a sense of beauty.

Foppa and Borgognone both, in the fulness of their powers, fell under the wizardry of Leonardo da Vinci's commanding genius. Borgognone's greatest works are to be seen in Milan and Pavia. His greatest pupil was Bernardino Luini.

Another pupil of Foppa who came to distinction was BARTOLOMMEO SUARDI (1450-1526?), who afterwards went to the great architect and painter Bramante, whence he came to be known by the name of BRAMANTINO. His art sometimes rises to great heights, but he was a most unequal painter. On Leonardo da Vinci's departure from Milan in 1499, it was Bramantino who most influenced the further achievement of Milan, and both his pupil Gaudenzio Ferrari and Luini owed heavy tribute to him. Unfortunately, his frescoes at the Vatican were destroyed by order of Pope Julius II., to make way for Raphael.

Others of Foppa's pupils who came to repute were VINCENZO CIVERCHIO of Crema, BERNARDINO DE' CONTI of Pavia, BERNARDINO BUTTINONE, and BERNARDO ZENALE.

Of MACRINO D'ALBA little is known, except that he was painting in Milan when Foppa was the great painter of the city ; a few of the works of his hand are to be seen in Alba, his native town, in the Certosa of Pavia, and in Turin.

[162] ANDREA DA SOLARIO, born about 1460, and dying in 1515 (who, by the way, must not be confounded with Antonio da Solario, more famous as Lo Zingaro), was born at Solario by Milan, and went with his elder brother and master, CHRISTOFANO, to Venice in 1490, where he became a follower of the Vivarini School of Venice. Of this Venetian period his Portrait of a Senator, in the National Gallery in London, is an example. Three years later (1493) Solario went back to Milan, and immediately came under the spell of Leonardo da Vinci. This, his later work, is seen at its best in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum at Milan.

Of the men of this time, amongst whom perhaps the ablest were FILIPPO MAZZOLA of Parma, who caught much of the Venetian influence, and the two TACCONI, was an artist from Cremona, one BOCCACCIO BOCCACCINO (1460-1524), who combined the Lombard and Venetian styles with considerable skill ; his gaiety of colour, his poetic landscape, and his best qualities are displayed in his fine Marriage of St. Catherine at the Academy in Venice.

So far, the Milanese contemporaries of Leonardo are seen to have passed completely under Leonardo's influence. The school that Leonardo founded by direct teaching brought forth a more or less brilliant group of pupils, but whose art cannot be said to have reached to the highest achievement. The most prominent were GIOVANNI ANTONIO BOLTRAFFIO (1467-1516), MARCO D'OGGIONO or D'OGGIONNO (born about 1470, died 1530), CESARE DA SESTO (1477-1523), SALAINO, GIANPETRINO, and MELZI -that Melzi who went with his master into France. They caught the tricks of thumb, the manner and style of their great master, but of his genius they could secure little. They ran to exhaustive finish, and their aim was prettiness; [163] they had small vision for character; and they were not above tediousness. But Boltraffio came to considerable distinction as portrait painter ; and his Head of Christ, in the Morelli collection at Bergamo, reveals his highest reach of achievement. He had brilliant colour if somewhat hard in its brilliancy. He who looks upon Boltraffio's Madonna and Child in the National Gallery in London, must be struck by the overwhelming influence that Leonardo exerted upon Boltraffio's vision, for the pupil sees the Virgin's features through Leonardo's borrowed spectacles. Indeed, the whole group of these painters may be aptly described as fine Leonardesques. Melzi had much of the refined quality of a miniaturist ; Salaino had exquisite delicacy of handling ; d'Oggiono had a somewhat bizarre sense of beauty ; Cesare da Sesto a feminine sweetness ; Marco d'Oggiono is very fully represented in the public and private collections at Milan. At least they served their great master one vast good turn by their many copies of Leonardo's lost or perished works, thereby leaving us a clumsy idea of what these perished works might have been like.