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

Chap. VIII. APPOINTMENT AT BRESCIA CANCELLED 189
After 1492 the name of Foppa is not met with again in the Deliberations
of the Council until May 15, 1495 (Doc. No. 62), and we have no clue as to the
circumstances of his life during the interval between these years ; but from
the entry just named of May 15, it is clear that on this day the Municipal
Authorities at Brescia stopped his salary of 100 lire planet, and cancelled his
appointment as official painter to the Government, which he had held
No reason is given for the summary treatment of one who only a
since 1490.
few years before had been spoken of in the highest terms, and had been
unanimously appointed to the office which he held for the space of four years.
Nor does it appear that the subject had been brought up for deliberation at
the meeting of the Special Council before being referred to the General Assembly.
As already observed, the Provvisioni contain not the slightest allusion
to Foppa between November 23, 1492, and this entry of May 15, 1495,
which is couched in very uncompromising terms, and merely states that the
salary of Master Vincenzo, the painter, is cancelled in toto, it having been
granted subject only to the good pleasure of the Community. The motion
was carried by an overwhelming majority of sixty-five votes to eighteen.
From the next document (No. 63) of June 12, 1495, we infer that the
painter's yearly engagement must have dated from June i, and he therefore
sought to recover the small sum to which he was legally entitled for the fortnight
intervening between the day on which his salary was cancelled and the
end of his official year. On the 12th June, 1495,^ his appeal was discussed in
the Special Council (Doc. No. 63), but the master lost his case by one vote ;^
at the same time the Council unanimously agreed that the sum of 12 lire
10 soldi, representing perhaps the arrears of his salary up to May 15, was to be
paid to him. The sum was to be paid in cash, the authorities modifying a
former resolution (no longer existing) of the Special Council, which had
provided for the settlement of this debt by assigning to the painter the right
' It is unfortunate that the volume containing the minutes of the year 1495 has
either been tampered with or has been very carelessly bound : on folio 165 v. the
meeting of June 4, 1495, is entered ; following this, after two blank pages, we have
a meeting of July 10, 1495, with the paging "
f. i." The meetings then succeed one
another in their proper order (with the exception of some irregularity in August)
for fourteen pages, up to September n. Then follows f. 166 with the meeting of June
8, which was of course the meeting immediately succeeding that of June 4. The entries
of the June meetings extend to f. 175, after which we are taken back to f. 15 and to the
entry of September 1 1 ; the meetings then follow one another regularly up to the end of
the year.
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It is strange that Zamboni, who quotes so many passages from the Provvisioni
relating to Foppa, should have overlooked the entries of 1495, more especially as we
find the fact of Foppa's salary having been stopped in that year, referred to in Poncarali's
index (see Ind. Pone, under Pictoribus, f. 319).