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

136 VINCENZO FOPPA
Barbagelata. We have no clue as to the exact date of its production, but it
must certainly fall between the years 1477 and 1483.^ We have indirect
evidence in a little memorandum in the Archivio Notarile at Pavia that
Vincenzo must about this period have undertaken to execute another large
work at Genoa. In this document (No. 37), which is dated Pavia, June 3,
1485, Agostino della Canonica, brother of Bertolino, acknowledges that he
has received on behalf of his brother, from Vincenzo, the sum of sixty-five
lire, twelve soldi, which money had been restored by Bertolino to a certain
Genoese, being earnest money "for a work to be executed at Genoa by the
same Master Vincenzo."
that Foppa never executed the work for this Genoese, and
The inference is
being pressed to return the earnest money, and being then at Pavia, he paid
it back to Bertolino's brother in the workshop of his neighbours, the brothers
Gazzaniga. The paper is among the deeds of the notary Ludovico Leggi,
but it has not the usual formalities of a legal document, and is merely the
rough draft of a deed, which accounts for the obvious mistake respecting
Foppa's father, who is here called Giacomo, whereas in numerous documents,"
the correctness of which cannot be questioned, Vincenzo is always
described as the son of Giovanni. The importance of this brief memorandum
lies in the proof it affords of Foppa's presence at Pavia in the summer of 1485
and of his activity in Liguria before that date.
A very important document (No. ;^^), to which allusion has already been
made (p. 71), Foppa's petition to the Duke of Milan, is unfortunately not
dated,' but must have been drawn up at some period prior to the middle of
July, 1481, as the Duke's letter, enclosing the petition to the Podesta of
Pavia, bears the date July 19 of that year.
The petition states that Dame Caterina de Bolis of Cremona had, at
some period not mentioned, made a deed of gift to her son-in-law Vincenzo
de Fopa, painter and citizen of Milan, of a house situated in the Contrada
S. Agata (the street of St. Agatha), in the city of Brescia, subject to certain
conditions, of which we give the substance here, as they afford some
interesting glimpses of the painter's domestic affairs. The first condition
was that he was to maintain his mother-in-law for the remainder of her life ;
and that he was also to support a certain granddaughter of hers up to the
1 In May, 1483, as we gather from document No. 35, Foppa was certainly at Pavia
and could not therefore have been working at Genoa at that date. Documents ^3 and
34, however, seem to authorize the belief that by 14S1 he had already returned to Pavia,
and we might consequently assume that the Spinola altarpiece was produced between
1477 and 1481.
^ See Appendix I, Note 3.
^
Petitions and documents of this description were never dated.