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

Chap. X. FOPPA'S ART AND INFLUENCE 245
attempt to deal with those romantic and allegorical themes which the Venetian
masters handled with such unexampled charm. The pageants and triumphs
of Mantegna, founded upon the models of classic bas-reliefs, find no place in
the simpler and more homely art of Vincenzo Foppa, and the expression of
passionate feeling and violent agitation, which painters such as Botticelli or
Ercole Roberti excelled in depicting, was also, it would appear, foreign to
his nature. In the whole range of his existing works we can mention but two
examples in which he breaks loose, as it were, from his habitual methods and
gives expression to strong emotion, i.e. the figure of the impenitent thief in
the Bergamo Crucifixion, and the Mary distraught with grief in the Berlin
Pieta. Yet these suffice to prove that, when he chose, he was capable of
expressing the passion of despair and the poignancy of grief with convincing
power. The choice of subjects lay with the donors of the pictures ; hence if
Foppa's art now appears to us restricted in scope and limited in aim, it can
scarcely be laid to his charge, but must rather be attributed to the instructions
of his patrons, and it must be borne in mind that those of his paintings
which have come down to us—much injured altarpieces and fragments of
fresco for the most part transferred to panel or canvas— are but the remnant of
his life work, from which no just estimate of the range and quality of his art
can be formed. Fresco is the medium in which the true character of every
great Italian master finds expression, and from this standpoint alone can he
be adequately judged. But in the case of Foppa this is impossible, for the
extensive and numerous cycles of fresco executed by him at Pavia, Milan,
Genoa, and Brescia, in some of which we know that he treated historical
subjects and portraits, have perished, and it would therefore be manifestly
unfair to regard the works which we now look upon as in any sense representative,
since they can show us but one aspect of his many-sided artistic
capacity. Nevertheless, they alone have been sufficient to establish the fame
of Vincenzo Foppa for all time, and to vindicate his right to be regarded as
the first master of his day in Pavian and Milanese territory.
The great merit of his art, as shown in these works, apart from its obviously
high qualities of draughtsmanship and design, appears to us to lie in his grasp
of and sympathy with human nature, in the sincerity with which he
approached that study, and the convincing truth with which, by the mastery
of his brush, he was able to depict the varying phases of human emotion.
Herein lay the mainspring of his inspiration, and this was the heritage which
he bequeathed to his followers. Endowed with such gifts, he must un-
painters who came
doubtedly have exercised a salutary influence over those
in contact with him, and the individual and powerful nature of his art was
determining in its effect far beyond the limits of his immediate environment.
A school developed upon such lines, had it been permitted to run its natural