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

226 VINCENZO FOPPA
The list of Foppa's payments to the quarter occupies, as we have seen, the
whole of f. 2 V. in the rent-book ; the next page (f. 3) is entirely filled with
statements of accounts, principally payments made to different massari
between the years 1502 and 15 17. This page has no heading, and were it
not for the duplicate entries of the account-book we should be entirely in the
dark as to the persons referred to on this sheet.
The first entry on f.
3 (see illustration) states that on June 16, 1502,
Hippolytus received 48 soldi, or lire 2, soldi 8. Turning to the accountbook
we find on f. 148 that the person who collected this sum was the
massaro of the quarter, Francesco da Mantua, whose surname we know
from this and other entries to have been Hippolyto ; while the money which
he here acknowledges to have received was from " Vincenzo the painter."
The importance of this system of double entry adopted by the massari of
the quarter will be seen at a glance if we turn to the Appendix (II, Doc.
No. 74), where the entries on f. 3 of the rent-book and the corresponding
memoranda in the account-book will be found printed in parallel columns.
On f. 3 Foppa is but twice mentioned by name as Master Vincenzo, in the
years 1505 and 1513 (Items 2 and 9), and we should be unable to point
with any certainty to the identity of the persons whose payments are
here recorded, but the entries in the account-book leave us in no doubt ;
twelve times he is there spoken of as Master Vincenzo the painter and twice
as Master Vincenzo Foppa the painter (Items 13 and 14). It is not necessary
to discuss each item, but a few require some comment, and for clearness sake
all the entries in Doc. 74 have been numbered.
Items i« and ib have no duplicates in the account-book, and the massaro
of that year, Apollonio Botano, had evidently omitted to enter them. From
Item lb, October, 1503, we learn that Foppa had a wife living at this date who
paid her husband's "livello" to the quarter in person, and she is referred to
in these rent and account books as acting in this capacity on her husband's
behalf in the years 1505, 1509, and 15 10.
(f. 145) took a different view, and considered that the house of Venturino de' Sali stood
on the site of the house known in his day as Casa Fontana, at the corner of Via Porta
Nuova and Via delle Antiche Mura, the aspect being the same as in the house
mentioned above. In that case Foppa's house would have been practically built upon
the old Roman wall, which was still
south towards Contrada Bruttanome, the present Corso Magenta
;
in existence at that period, and would have looked
but such a position
would scarcely have been permitted by the Brescian law, which prohibited the erection
of any buildings whatsoever in the immediate vicinity of the walls (see the Statutes
of Brescia of 1470, first printed in 1490 and reprinted in 1557, Nos. 60 and 67). It
seems therefore from every point of view more reasonable to identify the site with that
now occupied by the house at the corner of Via Pendente and Via Porta Nuova.