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

'
6 VINCENZO FOPPA
signed "Stefaniis," a signature now almost obliterated; the Madonna and
Child with angels in the Colonna Gallery, Rome the Adoration
;
of the Magi
in the Brera signed "Stefanus 1435"; the lunette of the Madonna and
Child with angels at Illasi, near Verona, and many more. It is unlikely
that these and other works at Verona, which chronologically cover a
considerable period of time, are all by the same hand ; but being closely
followed the same general tendencies.
painters is undoubtedly true, though the influence was scarcely a direct one.
Vincenzo's earliest leanings towards art may have been fostered in the
Broletto Chapel at Brescia, painted many years before his birth by Gentile ;
allied in feeling and containing elements present in a greater or less
degree in all, they must certainly have been produced by painters who
It has also been suggested that Foppa's art may have been derived from
Gentile da Fabriano. That there was some connection between the two
but Odorici's statement that the latter lived at Brescia and there taught
Testorino, Prandino, and Foppa is certainly incorrect. If Foppa was first
taught at Verona, his earliest impressions would have been strengthened in
that school, for the " Stefano " of the Brera Adoration of the Magi is manifestly
a close follower of the painter of Fabriano. Gentile certainly had no
workshop in North Italy in the years when Foppa was being trained, for he
is known to have died in Rome in 1428 ;- but as one of the great pioneers of
art, to whom his contemporaries assigned a very high place among the
painters of that day,' his influence was indirectly felt throughout North
Italy, and is perceptible in many works of the early fifteenth century. Links
with the art of Gentile are apparent also to some extent in Cav. Noseda's
picture,* though it is more intimately connected in feeling with the school of
Verona—with Pisanello as seen, for instance, in the Madonna of S. Fermo
Maggiore at Verona, and with the group of artists dependent upon this great
master, as seen more especially in the compositions just alluded to in the
Colonna Gallery, the Brera, and the Verona Museum.
' Marino Sanuto {Itinerario per la Term Fenna, 1483, p. 71) speaks of the extraordinary
beauty of this chapel, which he says cost Pandolfo Malatesta 14,000 ducats.
Ubertino Puscolo (De laudibus Brixie,
MS. Querin. Lib.) also mentions the paintings
with great admiration, and especially praises the composition representing St. George
on horseback slaying the dragon. It is interesting to remember that Cosimo Tura,
when commissioned to paint the Chapel of Belriguardo, before beginning his work
visited Brescia in order to see Gentile's frescoes there (see Venturi, Rivista Storica
Italiana, 1884, fasc. iv, p. 606, note).
- Zonghi, Z' anno della morte di G. da Fabriano.
' B. Facius, De Viris illustribiis
, p. 45
; see also Arte, Anno XI, fasc. i, p. 51.
* Compare it, for instance, with Gentile da Fabriano's Madonna and saints in the
Berlin Gallery, and with the Madonna and Child at Pisa.