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

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VINCENZO FOPPA
altarpiece at Savona (see chap, vii, p. 176), and with similar compositions in
many other contemporary works of painting and sculpture.
The very close connection between the types of the saints in the Carmine
and those in the ceiling of the desecrated Church of S. Antonio at Breno,
and the similarity in colouring, decorative motives^ and other particulars
between the two works, make it probable that both are by the same hand,
though we are unable to identify the painter. This similarity was pointed
out by Crowe and Cavalcaselle,' who observed that the frescoes at Breno
"are painted in a way reminiscent of Foppa and Civerchio.''^
From the diary of Pandolfo Nassino,^ and from many other sources, we
know that this chapel in the Carmine belonged to the great Brescian family
of the Averoldi. Several of their tombs still exist before the altar and on the
eastern wall,
and their Arms may even now be seen high up on the exterior of
the south wall of the church, but no records have yet been discovered which
would throw any light on the history of the paintings, and they can only be
classed for the present among works traditionally ascribed to Vincenzo Foppa
on insufficient grounds.
Two possibilities suggest themselves as to the work which occupied Foppa
in the years immediately succeeding the assassination of Galeazzo Maria
Sforza—that he undertook to paint the altarpiece for S. Maria delle Grazie
at Bergamo, and that he then returned to Genoa, for the works which we
know he executed in the latter city would have necessitated his presence
there for longer periods than the records we at present possess would lead us
to suppose. As the documents which might decide these questions are conspicuous
by their absence, we can only collect the facts, so far as they are at
present known, relating to these works, in the hope that eventually some
further clue may be found to elucidate the subject.
The appearance of the altarpiece now in the Brera seems to justify the
assumption that in these years Foppa may have received the commission
to paint it for the great Franciscan Church of S. Maria delle Grazie at
Bergamo. In 1476 the Bishop, Ludovico Donato, instituted in this church
^ n, 363.
^ We might conjecture that this was also the opinion of Mr. Berenson. In his index
of places (pp. cit., p. 309) we find the name of Civerchio as an artist represented in the
Carmine at Brescia, though no mention is made of this church in his index to the works
of Civerchio (p. 195) ;
yet these frescoes are clearly the only works upon which the name
of that painter could be bestowed in the Carmine. The frescoes of Brescia and Breno,
however, appear to us to be by one of the many anonymous masters of Brescia who were
working in that city towards the close of the fifteenth century and in the early years of
the sixteenth.
^ Registro di Memorie di Brescia, Bibl. Querin., f. 257, 276, etc.