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

256 VINCENZO FOPPA
able to explain satisfactorily.' In both these pictures and in many more too
numerous to mention the conflicting elements of the earlier and the later
schools are apparent.
The painters, though deeply imbued with the new ideas,
were seemingly unwilling or unable altogether to abandon the principles in
which they had been trained.
During the long years of Foppa's sojourn at Pavia it is to be assumed
that the painters in that city must have derived much from their constant
intercourse with the great master, but owing to the scarcity of existing
works of the early Pavian school it is extremely difficult to form any
opinion as to the extent of his influence here, and among the numerous
documents known to us, four only contain any reference to painters of Pavia
in connection with Foppa," The painters there named are Giacomino
de Meliis, Leonardo Vidolenghi, Antonio Rovati, and Giovanni Siro Cattaneo
da Brignano, and one alone among them, i.e. the last named, is spoken of as
having been in artistic relations with the master ; the remaining three being
only mentioned as witnesses in certain legal transactions.
We should not therefore be justified in assuming that Foppa's workshop at
Pavia was, like that of Giovanni da Vaprio and of Leonardo Vidolenghi, a
busy school in which numerous pupils and apprentices were trained. The
circumstances of Foppa's life would seem to preclude this, for the master
being overwhelmed with work not only for the Dukes of Milan, but also for
other patrons in that city, at Bergamo, Genoa, Brescia, Savona, and no
doubt for many more of whom we know nothing, would have been unable to
devote himself for any length of time to the task of teaching pupils at Pavia.
But indirectly, or through the medium of his works, Vincenzo must have
influenced the older masters his contemporaries, who in turn transmitted the
traditions and the leading characteristics of the school of Foppa to their
followers. Thus in the few remaining works of the second half of the
fifteenth century at Pavia a relation with the Brescian master is more or less
discernible. It is very apparent in the altarpiece of the Bottigella family,
formerly in the Church of S. Tommaso, to which we referred in chap, ix,
and in the frescoes of what was formerly the Oratory of the Collegio Castiglioni,
to which allusion was made in chap. iii. It is seen also in the frescoes
by different hands which adorn the pillars of the Church of the Carmine at
Pavia, to some extent in the large fresco of the apse of S. Michele executed
in 1491 by Agostino da Montebello, the pupil and son-in-law of Leonardo
Vidolenghi, and in the small altarpiece of S. Primo, painted in 1498 by
Agostino, the son and pupil of Giovanni da Vaprio, though in
these two last-
1 See Carotti, op. cit., p. 155 note, and Malaguzzi, Catalogo Brera, p. 281.
- See App. II, A, Nos. 2, 8, 16, and 69.