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

204 VINCENZO FOPPA
idea that the picture, in composition and sentiment, may have been very
similar to the Rossi altarpiece, with the addition of two saints and two halflength
figures of members of the Disciplinati of S. Barnaba who were
evidently the donors of the picture.
The little oratory was very near the Church of S. Barnaba in the second
ward of the quarter of S. Alessandro, and the altarpiece appears to have been
in existence up to 1804, when the confraternity was suppressed and the
oratory became the property of Count Tommaso Belucanti.
Subsequently to
this the picture disappeared, and Monsig. Fe^ was unable to give any clue to
its fate. No painter of the name of " Vincenzo Zotto " is met with at
Brescia, and writers therefore assumed that Paolo Zoppo was meant ;" but the
many late and feeble paintings ascribed to him at Brescia in the present day
do not warrant the attribution to him of a work which, from Paglia's description,
must have been full of feeling and character.
The inaccurate and variable spelling of proper names by sixteenth and
seventeenth century writers—due originally, there can be no doubt, to a
careless and faulty transcription of MSS.—adds greatly to the difficulties
of art historians when seeking to identify painters of earlier times with any
certainty. Vasari, as we have seen, calls Foppa "Vincenzo di Zoppa," and
it is not improbable that by "Vincenzo Zotto," Paglia intended to designate
our painter.^ This writer's mention of his ill luck doubtless refers to the
misfortunes which,
as we know, so often dogged his footsteps, culminating in
his dismissal from his post at Brescia, the circumstances of which were
perhaps still known in the time of Paglia. Paolo Zoppo, the friend of
Giovanni Bellini who is mentioned in Bembo's correspondence, seems, as far
1 Op. cit., IV, p. 14.
^ Carbon!, p. 117 and index (where the painter is referred to as Paolo Zotto or
Zoppo); Crowe and Cav., II, 431, note; and others.
^ A study of Paglia's two autograph MSS., in the Queriniana Library at Brescia,
has led us to the conclusion that whenever this writer speaks of "Vincenzo Zotto,"
he intended to designate Vincenzo Foppa ; whereas in the numerous instances when he
speaks of "Foppa" or "Paolo Foppa," he meant the painter's nephew Paolo Caylina,
known as Paolo Foppa. For instance, on f. 133 of the first MS. and f. 149 of the
second, referring to the paintings in the Church of SS. Cosma and Damiano, he distinguishes
between Vincenzo Zotto, "an early painter" ("pittor antico "), and Foppa,
whom he usually mentions by this name, but whom on ff. 100, 542, 584, 560, etc., he
speaks of more explicitly as Paolo Foppa. In both his MSS. Paglia is consistent in
Unfortunately, however, as we shall see later when speaking
drawing this distinction.
of painters at Brescia (chap, x), Paglia's critical judgment is worthless, and it would
be idle to suppose that the pictures still existing, which are identical with those ascribed
by Paglia to Paolo Foppa, could with any probability be regarded as genuine works
by Vincenzo Foppa's nephew.