Footnote 35: See Lomazzo, Treatise on Painting, p. 405.
Somewhat later, and not before 1497, Altobello Melone and Boccaccio Boccaccino, two Cremonese artists, were employed in completing the frieze of the cathedral. The former, according to Vasari, painted several histories of the Passion, truly beautiful and deserving of commendation. But he was the least consistent in point of style, introducing, as it has been observed, figures of small and large proportions in the same piece, and also least excellent in his frescos, colouring them in a manner that now gives them the look of tapestry. But he excelled in his oil paintings, as we gather from his altar-piece of Christ descending into Limbo, which is preserved in the sacristy of the Sacramento, a piece for which the canons refused to receive a large sum that was offered for it. The figures are very numerous, of somewhat long proportions, but coloured with equal softness and strength. His knowledge of the naked figure is beyond that of his age, combined with a grace of features and of attitudes that conveys the idea of a great master. In the Notizia of Morelli, his picture of Lucretia, painted for private ornament, is mentioned. It is executed in the Flemish style, and he is said to have been the pupil of Armanino, perhaps an artist of that nation.
Boccaccio Boccaccino bears the same character among the Cremonese as Grillandaio, Mantegna, Vannucci, and Francia, in their respective schools, the best modern among the ancients, and the best of the ancients in the list of the moderns. He had the honour of instructing Garofolo during two years previous to his visiting Rome in 1500. In the frieze of the cathedral, Boccaccino painted the Birth of the Virgin, along with other histories, relating to her and the Divine Infant. The style is in part original, and in part approaches that of Pietro Perugino, whose pupil Pascoli says he was. But he is less regular in his composition, less beautiful in the air of his heads, and less powerful in his chiaroscuro, though richer in his drapery, with more variety of colours, more spirit in his attitudes, and scarcely less harmonious or less pleasing in his architecture and landscape. He is, perhaps, least attractive in some of his figures, which are somewhat coarse, owing to their having a fulness of drapery, and not being sufficiently slender, a defect carefully avoided by the ancient statuaries, as I have formerly observed.[36] It is remarked by Vasari that he visited Rome, in which I agree with him, both because it is in some degree alluded to by Antonio Campi, and because there are evident traces of his imitation of Pietro, as in his Marriage of the Virgin Mary, and in a very magnificent temple, that appears erected upon lofty steps, a subject repeated by Pietro several times. It has been also noticed that his Madonna at S. Vincenzo, with the titular Saint and S. Antonio, seems like the work of Vannucci, and he certainly approaches very near him in other figures. I can easily believe, therefore, that Boccaccino was at Rome; but I also believe that what is written of him by Vasari and by Baldinucci, if not fictitious, is at least wide of the mark.