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

—
Chap. X. INFLUENCE IN LIGURIA; AT BRESCIA 259
of Liguria to follow the principles of Foppa as practised by Bergognone ;
cousin Antonio Brea, a little-known painter of considerable ability and charm,
was still working on these lines in the second decade of the sixteenth century,
and so too was the author of an earlier altarpiece in the parish church at
Nervi' (ascribed to Teramo di Piaggio, though scarcely by him), a work directly
imitated from some of Bergognone's altarpieces in the Certosa.
Reminiscences of the school of Foppa are at
his
times met with in the works
of later Pavian painters who worked at Genoa, such as Bernardino Fasolo^
and Pier Francesco Sacchi, who were both employed in Liguria for many
years. In the Crucifixion by the latter painter in the Berlin Gallery of 15 14,
and in the Four Doctors of the Church in the Louvre of 15 16, Sacchi appears
as one of the strongest representatives of Lombard art at that date, and even
in his latest work of 1528—the fine Pieta in the Church of Monte Oliveto at
Multedo motives occur which seem like a last echo of Foppesque tendencies.'
At Brescia, as far as we can judge in the present day, though Foppa was
resident there for practically five-and-twenty years and was certainly active as
a teacher in the last decade of the fifteenth century, we have scarcely any
tangible evidence, in existing paintings, of his presence, and the most eloquent
indirect testimony to his influence is afforded by documents in the municipal
archives in that city, in which we find a notable increase in the names of
painters at Brescia in the years when Foppa was working there, that is after
1490. An artist who must have had relations with him in the first years of
the sixteenth century was the Carmelite monk Giov. Maria da Brescia.^
This is proved by his engraving of 1502,^ which shows that he founded his
types and manner of composition altogether upon Vincenzo Foppa. The
connection between this plate and the drawing for the Justice of Trajan in
the Print Room at Berlin, as stated in chap. 11 (p. 49), is so remarkable that
it would be impossible to regard it as purely accidental ; and the same must
^
Reproduced by Suida, Genua, p. 141.
' See especially his St. Sebastian of 1518 in the Santuario del Monte, Genoa, repr.
Smdsi /hrb. cit., XXVI, p. 355.
^ Many other works ranging over a considerable period of time, from the second
half of the fifteenth century to the close of the first quarter of the sixteenth, show
occasional traces of a connection with Foppa and his school. For instance, the earlier
paintings of Lorenzo Fasolo the Pavian, the beautiful anonymous altarpieces at
Cogorno and Pontremoli, and numerous paintings in the churches and collections of
Genoa and throughout the province of Liguria. According to Mr. Berenson {op. cit.,
99, 121), no nook or cranny between Brescia, the Gulf of Genoa, and the crest of
the Mt. Cenis escaped the influence of Foppa ; but we should scarcely venture to claim
for the master an influence so overpowering and widespread, since it is difficult to see
how it can be proved by existing works.
* Chaps. II and viii. ' See illustration, chap, ii, p. 50.