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

4 VINCENZO FOPPA
boy Vincenzo may have learned the first rudiments, but the fact that so many
painters from other parts of Italy were employed at
Brescia proves that even
in the second quarter of the fifteenth century the indigenous art life of the city
must still have been at a low ebb, and that no local school of any importance
had as yet arisen there.
It has usually been asserted that Foppa went early to Padua, and was
there taught in the school of Squarcione ; but the theory rests only upon a
very insecure foundation—namely, upon a passage in Vasari, the meaning of
which is ambiguous. In the Life of Carpaccio, after speaking of various
painters at Padua, the biographer begins a fresh paragraph with these words :
" Fu tenuto in pregio ne' medesimi tempi Vincenzo pittore bresciano, secondo,
che racconta il Filarete, e Girolamo Campagnuola, anch' egli pittore padoano,
e discepolo dello Squarcione."*
The sentence has been variously translated and punctuated by different
annotators of Vasari. Crowe and Cavalcaselle interpret it as follows :
" Filarete and Campagnola both say that Foppa was a disciple of Squarcione."*
It appears to us, however, that Filarete merely says that Vincenzo
was a Brescian, and it is quite certain, moreover, that he never speaks of
Squarcione in connection with Foppa throughout his Trattato ; in the
second part of the sentence it would seem as if Vasari was here alluding
to Girolamo Campagnola himself, as the Paduan disciple of Squarcione,
though local writers, it must be admitted, never speak of him as a painter.^
Vincenzo was no doubt well known at Padua, and there is nothing remarkable
in Vasari's casual mention of him when speaking of painters in that city ;
but it is of little consequence what Vasari actually intended to convey by this
sentence, since all his information relating to Lombard painters is of a very
cursory and unreliable nature.^ The main point is, have we any evidence in
Foppa's early work of Paduan influence and of the teaching of Squarcione?'
' " Highly esteemed too at this period was Vincenzo, a painter of Brescia, according
to Filarete, and Girolamo Campagnola, who was also a Paduan painter and a disciple
of Squarcione" (ed. 1568, I, p. 521).
all
* II, 3. See also Kallab, Vasari Studien, p. 351.
* Kristeller, Giulio Campagnola, p. 6.
* This is not surprising when we remember that it was third-hand Information, being
derived from a letter (now lost) written by the above-named Girolamo Campagnola to
Leonico Tomeo (1456-1531), a Venetian and Professor of Greek in the University of
Padua (Vas., ed. Mil. Ill, 385, notes i and 2, and 634, note i, and Kallab, op. cit. 347-354).
Girolamo was the father of the painter and engraver Giulio Campagnola (Kristeller,
op. cit,).
^ The important discoveries of Signor Lazzarini have thrown a flood of fresh light
upon the history of Squarcione and the early school of Padua (see Nuovo Archivio
Veneto, XII, p. 165, and Rassegna d'Arte, Sept., 1906). His latest article in the Niiovo