Vincenzo Foppa of Brescia, founder of the Lombard school, his life ...

Chap. II. FRESCO AT HERTFORD HOUSE 55
been proposed to adorn some part of the same parapet with representations of
the Virtues.'
A certain connection between this fresco and that of 1485 in the Brcra, in
colouring and other particulars, leads us to infer that it may have been
produced between this date and Foppa's return to Genoa about 1487, and we
should assume that the series belonged to the period when the bank, as such,
had ceased to exist and the house had passed out of the hands of the Medici ;
for we know that in 1484 Lorenzo the Magnificent was in such financial
difficulties that he was forced to sell it for the sum of 4000 ducats.'' We are
unable to say how it came to pass that Foppa was again employed in the
building in these later years, but we know that he was engaged in executing
frescoes in Milanese churches at this period, and as his reputation was still
great at the time, it is probable that the new owners of the palace entrusted
him with the redecoration of the building. The idea that the figure of the
parapet had some reference to the bank, is therefore as far-fetched as the
other surmise that it represented Pico della Mirandola, or that the Wallace
fresco was a portrait of Gian Galeazzo Sforza.' That the child in the Hertford
House composition is occupied in reading Cicero is evident from the
1 Filarete, Trattato (ed. Oett.), p. 685, says that on entering the door (of the palace)
and raising one's eyes, the frescoes of the History of Susanna were seen in the upper
loggia, and "on the front of the parapet are to be painted the Cardinal Virtues."
- Lorenzo de' Medici was in such straitened circumstances at the time, that he was
obliged to borrow 4000 ducats from Lodovico Sforza. The necessity of parting with the
bank affected him deeply, and it is probable, says Guicciardini, "remembering his
generous and prodigal nature, that he sold it with tears in his eyes" ("e a credere,
rispetto alia sua natura liberale e magnifica, lo facessi colle lagrime in su gli occhi ").
Guicciardini, Opere inedite, Storia Fiorentina, Vol. IH, p. 88.
^ All these names must be regarded as purely imaginary, the invention of later
times, and wholly irrelevant to the scheme of decoration planned by the fifteenth century
painter and his employer. Mongeri in the Perseverauza of January 27, 1864, stated that
Lorenzo de' Medici sold the house to Lodovico Sforza, an inaccurate interpretation of
the words of Guicciardini, who merely states, as already noted, that Lorenzo was forced
to borrow 4000 ducats from Lodovico Sforza, and to sell a house which he owned at
Milan for another 4000 ; but who the purchaser of the house was, does not appear.
Here perhaps we have the explanation of the name which the fresco now bears. Professor
Bertini, relying upon the words of Mongeri, may have come to the conclusion
that the child represented would naturally represent a prince of the Sforza family, in all
probability the young Duke himself, and thus "Pico della Mirandola" would have
passed out of Italy as the portrait of Gian Galeazzo Sforza. As the name has clung to
the fresco ever since, and as the composition is likely to go down to posterity as the
authentic portrait of the young Duke of Milan, it is perhaps desirable to point out that
such a designation lacks all historical basis, having been bestowed upon the fresco
within the last fifty years only.