Oggione (or Uggione), Marco Da

Oggione (Or Uggione), Marco Da a noted Italian painter, and a distinguished scholar of Leonardo da Vinci at Milan about 1490, was born probably about 1470 at, as his name imports, Oggione, in the Milanese. He painted in oil and in fresco, and is on the whole one of the best of the Milanese painters. His frescos of the church Della Pace at Milan, which are much praised by Lanzi, are now in the Brera at Milan; they were removed from the wall by Barezzi. Oggione is, however, now chiefly known for his copy of the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Academy of Arts in London. This copy is painted in oil, and was executed about 1510 for the refectory of the Certosa di Pavia; and as it was copied when the original was in a perfect state, the present almost total decay of the latter renders it very valuable. The opinions regarding its merits are various. Oggione made two large copies, both, it is said, from a small copy made by himself for the purpose-that in oil, in the Royal Academy, and one in. fresco for the refectory of the convent of Castellazzo, which was copied by the Cav. Guiseppe Bossi, though Bossi's picture was taken chiefly from a copy in the Ambrosian Library made by Andrea Bianchi, called Vespino, in 1612, when the original was already much decayoe. There is an older copy at Ponte Capriasca, made in 1565, and attributed to Pietro Luini. Bossi's copy was made in 1807 for Eugene Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy, to be worked in mosaic; the cartoon is now at Munich, and the mosaic is at Vienna. But this work, made partly from one copy, partly from another, from studying other works of Da Vinci, and from the artist's own feeling of Da Vinci's style, is essentially a restoration or translation, and not a copy: it may have no resemblance to the original beyond size and composition; and to the true lover of art can have little value, compared with the old unassuming copy of Oggione. Marco da Oggione died in 1530.