AFTER the activity which had prevailed in Milan during the last half of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth century, art in Lombardy rapidly deteriorated. Before the decline had passed into decadence Pier Francesco Sacchi (fl. 1512–1527) painted at Pavia his Four Doctors of the Church (No. 1488), which is signed in the cartouche

Each of the Doctors duplicates the part of an Evangelist. On the left St. Augustine, with his book inscribed “De Civitate Dei,” is also shown as St. John with his eagle; St. Gregory, with his dove, is also St. Luke with his bull; St. Jerome, with his cardinal’s hat, is also St. Matthew with his angel; while St. Ambrose, with his scourge, is also St. Mark with his lion. The scourge held by St. Ambrose, a patron saint of Milan, alludes to his refusing the Emperor Theodosius admittance into the church at Milan in consequence of the general massacre he ordered with a view to subduing a sedition at Thessalonica in A.D. 390.

Another early-sixteenth-century Pavian painter was Bartolommeo Bononi, whose only known picture is the Madonna and Child, St. Francis, a Bishop, and a Monk (No. 1174). It is signed

on the stump of the tree in the centre foreground.

A striking, although mediocre, Family of the Virgin (No. 1284) by Lorenzo de’ Fasoli, who is also known as Lorenzo di Pavia, and who died about 1520, illustrates the tradition that St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, was three times married, Joachim being her third husband; the other two were Cleophas and Salome. This composition of seventeen figures is signed

and is one of the latest examples of this tradition, which about 1520 passed out of art.

A large Triptych (No. 1384), signed

is by Giovanni Massone, who worked at Alessandria in the second half of the fifteenth century; it contains the portraits of Pope Sixtus iv. with St. Francis of Assisi and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere under the protection of St. Anthony of Padua. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was Bishop of Savona about 1483; he was in 1503 elected Pope under the title of Julius ii., and became the patron of Raphael.

The remaining pictures of this school are of little account. Bernardino Campi (1522–1592?) is represented by a Mater Dolorosa (No. 1202); and Bartolommeo Manfredi (1580?–1617) by a Fortune Teller (No. 1368), a subject which demonstrates the Decadence in full operation. Giovanni Paolo Panini (1695–1764), who came to Paris in 1732 and became an Academician, seems to have got some satisfaction out of committing to canvas a Concert given at Rome on Dec. 26, 1729, in Honour of the Birth of the Dauphin, the son of Louis XV. (No. 1409) and a large Interior of St. Peter’s at Rome (No. 1408), the latter being signed and dated 1730.