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

246 VINCENZO FOPPA
course unchecked, should have become one of the strongest and most characteristic
among the schools of painting in North Italy; but the good seed sown
by Vinccnzo Foppa was foredoomed to destruction ere it had reached its full
maturity, for the coming of Leonardo da Vinci, himself a genius of the highest
order and the most widely gifted of all Italian masters, was fatal to the progress
of the early Lombard school. The vigorous growth of native art which
flourished at Milan and Pavia received a check from which it never recovered.
The school of Foppa gradually fell away from him, and when in 1490 the
master himself abandoned the field, it is not surprising that his followers, overwhelmed
by the wave of new ideas and methods, were unable to hold their
ground. Some few pursued their course undeterred ; others sought to combine
the two tendencies ; but the majority became absorbed and in course of
time lost all individuality. That Foppa's influence was dominant before this
period, that is from about 1461-85, is certain ; all that has been said in the
foregoing pages, based upon the evidence of documents and upon the testimony
of contemporary writers, only tends to show how great was his reputation
among his compatriots and fellow-workers, and how conspicuous was the
place he held as a leader in
his day.
In order to gauge the extent of his influence on Lombard art, and to
distinguish in some measure among his numerous contemporaries those who
were more or less affected by him and those who may with certainty be styled
his direct pupils, we must briefly recapitulate here what was said in chapter i
with regard to Foppa's position as head of the Lombard school.
It was there pointed out that Pavia and Milan, but more especially this
latter city, were centres of great artistic activity even in the early fifteenth
century ; that Foppa on his arrival at Pavia found a group of mature artists
in possession of the field, while at Milan he found a flourishing school, many
of whose numerous representatives had already been painters of note in
days when Filippo Maria Visconti held sway in the Duchy. It would therefore
be misleading to speak of the Brescian master as the actual founder (in
the literal sense of the word) of a school which was probably active before his
birth and which had itself been preceded by a yet earlier school, as numerous
fourteenth century frescoes still existing in Lombardy testify.' On the other
hand, there is not the slightest doubt that the art which Vincenzo Foppa found
dominant in Milanese territory was stagnant and incapable in itself of further
development, and that it was his coming, his personal influence and strong
individuality, which wrought the vital change and made the school what it
the
it
' With this school we have no concern here, its origin being altogether Tuscan ;
was the outcome of the wave of Giottesque feeling which swept over North Italy in the
fourteenth century.