Ambrogio Borgognone, called also Ambrogio da Fossano, the latter being the name of a town in Piedmont, was born at Milan. "It may have been Ambrogio's grandfather or great-grandfather who left the little Piedmontese town to settle at Milan; one of his ancestors had probably lived some time in Flanders (then called Borgogna by the Italians) and had thus received the surname of Borgognone. Ambrogio, who holds the same central place in the Milanese School of painting as Perugino in that of Perugia, and Francia in that of Bologna, was, according to my view, a pupil of Vincenzo Foppa the elder, and the real master of Bernardino Luini, the Raphael of the Milanese school. He remains in all his works a thorough Lombard" (Morelli's _German Galleries_, p. 419). The tenderness of feeling in this "Perugino of the Lombard School" is very marked. "The presentment of divine or holy personages, in calm serenity or in resigned suffering, accorded best," says Burton, "with his temperament. Even his colouring partakes of the pervading sentiment; the grey pallor of his heads is only modified, now and then, by the reddened eyelids of sorrow. In the Accademia at Pavia is a small picture, representing Christ bearing his cross, and followed by some Carthusian Brothers, which in simple pathos and deep religious meaning is perhaps without its equal in art." Ambrogio was distinguished as an architect no less than as a painter, and was employed on the façade of the Certosa of Pavia--a view of which building figures in the background of a picture by Ambrogio in our gallery (1410).