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

Chap. VI. ST. SEBASTIAN, BRERA 149
as we saw, has not the slightest indication of Paduan principles, and what Mantegnesque
traits there are in the Bergamo Crucifixion must be traced to the
source whence both masters drew their inspiration, namely, to Jacopo Bellini.
At the period when we assume that Foppa returned to Brescia after his years
of apprenticeship were over, Mantegna was still comparatively unknown ;
but
after the completion of the Eremitani Chapel, in which Andrea had so large
a share, and of some of his great altarpieces,' his fame must have spread
rapidly to every part of North Italy, and the painters of Milan and Pavia would
have been eager to make themselves acquainted at least with the compositions
of these works, and if possible to see and study the paintings themselves.
In the general plan of the frescoes in the Portinari Chapel there is much, as
we saw, that recalls the scheme of decoration in the Eremitani, and if, as may
be assumed, Vincenzo planned and superintended the work in
S. Eustorgio, it is
not improbable that he was sent by Pigello Portinari to Padua in order
to inspect the frescoes of Mantegna and his collaborators there, and to bring
back new ideas for the decoration of the Chapel of St. Peter Martyr. As in the
case of the Pavian ancona, different designs may then have been submitted
to the donor, who would from them have selected what appeared to him most
suitable for the embellishment of his chapel ; but whether in subsequent years
Foppa ever came into personal contact with Mantegna we cannot tell.
In the St. Sebastian of the Brera, Crowe and Cavalcaselle = draw attention
to the reminiscences of Mantegna which they detect in the posture of the saint,
in the soldier leaning on his sword behind the two bowmen, and in the arch,
and they add "
: It seems obvious that Foppa saw Mantegna's St. James going
to Martyrdom " (in the Eremitani Chapel). From other passages in their
life of Foppa we gather that they practically regard him as a pupil of
Mantegna. These views seem to be shared by many other writers and
Kristeller classes Foppa among artists who studied first under Donatello
and then under Mantegna.' The overwhelming influence exercised by
Donatello on contemporary art is undeniable and that leaning to the
methods of sculpture which we have noted in many of Foppa's compositions,
and his plastic manner of rendering form and drapery, was no doubt the
outcome of this wave of feeling which swept over North Italy. Yet this
tendency does not appear in his earliest known paintings ;
neither in the
Noseda picture nor in the Bergamo Crucifixion is there a trace of it, and it is
first met with in the works of his early middle period to
which we alluded in
chapter in. That he could have been a pupil of the Florentine is therefore
* Executed between 1454 and 1459.
' II, 4-
3 Mantegna, p. 47 (Engl, ed.) ; a few pages further on he appears however to regard
him as a pupil of Pisanello.