Foppa, Zenale and Luini. Lombard Painters before and after Leonardo

Robilant+Voena are pleased to announce an exhibition of Lombard art from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, exploring the artistic milieu in Lombardy before and after Leonardo da Vinci's influence in the area. The exhibition will present to the UK public for the first time this particular strand of the corporate collection of PKB Privatbank, Lugano (Switzerland).
This fascinating collection of museum quality works, of deep academic and aesthetic importance, was started in the 1980s by Serafino Trabaldo Togna (1922-2006), the driving force of PKB Bank, whose family originated from the geographic area of interest. It was his very concerted effort to concentrate on the Renaissance output from north-western Italy that defined the focus of the collection from its inception, and which has been followed to the present day by Massimo and Umberto Trabaldo Togna (sons of Serafino) and the PKB Board.
Today the collection numbers some twenty six works, from which Robilant+Voena will present a selection of twelve. Following on from the hugely successful exhibition at the National Gallery last year devoted to Leonardo, the exhibition at R+V will offer collectors and scholars a unique chance to delve into the artistic developments in Milan in the decades from ca. 1470 to 1530. Leonardo himself spent two significant sojourns at the court of Ludovico Sforza il Moro during that period - first from 1482 to 1499 and again, after the fall of the Sforza family, from 1508 to 1513. This exhibition will examine the Milan he found, as well as the influence he had in changing its future artistic output.
The earliest painting of the exhibition is a very rare St Peter by Vincenzo Foppa, a panel datable to the 1460s, when Foppa arrived in Milan to paint the chapel in Sant'Eustorgio for Tomaso Portinari. Two spectacular panels by Bergognone, an Ecce Homo and a Madonna and Child mark the turn of the century and bear an oblique reference to Leonardo's presence, while in the celebrated Circumcision by Zenale of ca.1520, which was in fact the first purchase made for the collection, we witness the very significant influence of the Leonardesque models. Two important works represent Leonardo's direct pupils in Milan: the Madonna with Child and a Saint by Andrea Solario, clearly indebted to the model of the Madonna Litta (St. Petersburg, Hermitage) of Leonardo, and the St. Jerome by Bernardino Luini where a lush landscape of woods, waters and stones is reminiscent of the fantastic landscapes of Leonardo's drawings.