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

Chap. III. FOPPA'S BROTHER-IN-LAW 71
this entry was seen by Caffi in tiie possession of Count Paolo Sozzi, of Bergamo."
In the same year a Pavian painter, Bertolino della Canonica, with
whom later Vincenzo was intimately associated, and a painter Bartolomeo,
whom we believe to have been Foppa's brother-in-law Bartolomeo Caylina,
were engaged in executing paintings on the walls and on the ceiling of the
small cloister of the Certosa. The entry in the account book quoted by
Beltrami" states that M. Bertolino et
M. Bartholomeo "omnesde Papia pictores
" (both painters of Pavia) were paid for this work in 1465.
Moiraghi' made the curious mistake of supposing that these two painters
who both bore the name of Bartolomeo (of which Bertolino is only another
form) were brothers, and the circumstance that they were working at the Certosa
at the same time as Foppa appears to have led him to the further erroneous
conclusion that in this year 1465, Vincenzo married their sister. That this
conjecture was wholly unfounded is proved by two documents of the Appendix:
No. 15, the letter of the Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza (see p. 74), which
shows that in 1456 Foppa was already a married man with children, and No.
33, his petition to the Duke, from which it appears that the painter's wife was
a Brescian, the sister of Bartolomeo Caylina, whom we now know to have
been a painter living, like Foppa, at Pavia ;
and as no other artist of the
name of Bartolomeo is known to have been working at Pavia at this date,
it seems reasonable to suppose that the associate of Bertolino della Canonica
at the Certosa was Bartolomeo Caylina. His connection with Bertolino is
further proved by the fact that both painters were acting as witnesses in a
legal transaction at Pavia on November 21, 1465.*
On March 8, 1466, Vincenzo's patron, Francesco Sforza, died in the
Palazzo deir Arengo ; his eldest son, Galeazzo Maria, was then in Dauphin6
commanding the troops which had been sent to the assistance of the French
King, but on receiving the news he set forth immediately for Italy, and on
March 20 made his state entry into Milan.*
In spite of his cruelty and depravity, which made Corio stigmatize him as
a second Nero," Galeazzo Maria was an enthusiastic patron of art and a
munificent friend to many of the best painters and craftsmen of the day ;
often, as we see from documents published by Rosmini, Casati, and others,
expending large sums on the pictorial decoration of buildings both secular
* Arch. Stor. Lomb.^ 1878, p. 99.
^ Certosa, p. 61, ed. 1895.
' Memorie e Documenti, etc., 1898, p. 100.
«
Arch. Not. Pavia. Atti di Guiniforte Strazzapatti. Caylina is here called:
" Bertolameo de Brissia pictore, filio quondam Magistri Petri habitatore Papie" (Bartolomeo
of Brescia, painter, inhabiting Pavia, son of the late Master Pietro).
5
Corio, VI, 414, Ratti, Delta famiglia Sforza.
« Ibid., 426.