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

Chap. VIII. ALTARPIECE OF S. MARIA GUALTIERI 191
we glance at the volume of the Provvisioni of the year 1495 from the month of
April onwards.' Further light is shed upon the state of affairs then existing
by a letter from the Provvedifot-e, Melchiorre Trevisani, relating to the
measures to be adopted for extorting war taxes, especially from the Brescians.'^
We must conclude that Foppa's relations with the Brescian Government
were never renewed, for no further trace of him is to be found in the Provvisioni
; but we know that he continued to live at Brescia up to the end of
his life, and the next notice of him here is in the Estimo of 1498, a volume
in which he is registered as inhabiting a house in the quarter of S. Alessandro.'
It is probable, however, that he was obliged to seek remunerative
employment elsewhere, and in the years immediately succeeding his dismissal
from his official post at Brescia he may have renewed his connection with
Pavia, and may perhaps have entered into negotiations with some of his
former patrons both here and at Milan.
Pavian documents of this period give us no ground for supposing that he
ever returned to live in his old house in the parish of S. Invenzio ; on the
contrary, as just noted, Brescia always remained his head-quarters ; but that
he had not severed every link with Pavia is proved by Doc. 69, in which we
have minute particulars relating to a picture painted by Foppa in the last years
of the fifteenth century for the Collegiate Church of S. Maria Gualtieri at
Pavia. At a meeting held in the sacristy of that church on October 30, 1499,
the Commendatory Abbot, Giov. Battista Botta, and the Canons discussed
the question of a certain payment to be made to Giovanni Siro dei Cattanei da
Brignano (a painter and member of a noble Pavian family), who had been
commissioned by them to provide an altarpiece for their church. The document
before us sums up the results of this meeting and enlightens us as to the
ways and means by which the Canons proposed to settle their debts with the
painter ; but it also contains, what is much more important, the full text of
the agreement between Siro and the Chapter of S. Maria Gualtieri relating
to the altarpiece, an agreement deserving of close study on account of its
allusions to Vincenzo Foppa.
Siro's share of the work, it appears, consisted neither of the painting
proper nor of the structural parts, but was confined to the gilding of the
whole, to the colouring of all the decorative portions, and to the painting of the
curtain and of the "cassa" or case ; finally, Siro was to put the whole work
together, fitting the painted panels and other component parts into the places
' Prov., April 28, 1495, f. 154 r. ; May 19, f. 160 v. ; May 29, f. 165 r. ;
June 8, f.
167 r., etc.
^
Registrum C, f. in, and E, f. 243 r., Brescia, Arch. Ant. Mun.
^ Doc. No. 68, which is fully discussed in chap, ix, and Appendix I, Note 3.