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

26o
VINCENZO FOPPA
be said of the obvious links between both these compositions and Foppa's
Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery. It seems certain therefore
that the engraver used a design by that master. Dr. Suida, however, has
pointed out that another engraving by Fra Giov. Maria of the same year
shows not the slightest connection with Foppa, from which he infers that the
Carmelite worked upon the designs of different artists.^ That he was himself
a painter we know from Brescian writers, and his signed frescoes in the
cloisters of the Carmine were still in existence in 1825 ; in that year they
were covered with whitewash,^ and we have therefore no means of ascertaining
whether he was actually a pupil of Foppa.'
Another artist who felt the influence of the master was the fresco
painter of the Val Camonica, Giov. Pietroda Cemmo, who, as we saw in chap.
VII, probably executed the series for the Augustinians in the library of
S. Barnaba. Art historians and guide-books continue to ascribe a most
heterogeneous collection of late paintings at Brescia to Vincenzo Foppa the
younger, and to Paolo Zoppo,"*
the former being always described as the son
1 Rassegna d' Arte, September, 1906.
^ The inscription was copied by Brugnoli (see Gtiida, etc., p. 187). The woodcuts
which this writer assigns to Giov. Maria da Brescia in Bonino de Bonini's edition of
Dante published at Brescia in 1487, certainly have no connection with him.
^
Another Carmelite, Fra Girolamo da Brescia, shows his dependence upon Foppa
in his signed picture in the Gallery of Savona, a late work of 15 19
Pinacoteca di Savona, ed. 1901, No. 25).
(see Cat. delta
* Paolo Zoppo, a painter of Bergamasque extraction (Calvi, Effemende, III, p. 317,
Tassi, Pittori Bergamaschi, and others), though, according to tradition, domiciled at
Brescia (a fact, however, not confirmed by documents in that city), has been confused by
Brescian writers with Paolo Caylina, who was also known as Paolo Foppa. The origin
of this confusion seems clear. We saw that Vincenzo Foppa was called by Vasari
Vincenzo di Zoppa (chap. 11, pp. 39, 46), while Paglia, in both his autograph MSS.
in the Queriniana Library at Brescia, speaks of him as Vincenzo Zotto or Sotto. Now,
as we know that Paolo Caylina in a document of the Archivio di S. Alessandro was
called Paolo Foppa, a name by which he was perhaps popularly known at Brescia ; and
as Paglia throughout his MSS. constantly speaks of Paolo Foppa but never mentions
Paolo Zoppo, is it not possible that the whole confusion may be traceable to the fact
that the names of the two painters had been incorrectly deciphered in MSS. and that
Brescian writers made the same mistake as Vasari, in misreading Zoppa for Foppa?
Thus Ottavio Rossi, in his book on distinguished Brescians (p. 508), ascribed to
Paolo Zoppo all the frescoes which in the later MSS. of Paglia, the writer on art,
are attributed to Paolo Foppa. Faini, a writer almost contemporaneous with Rossi,
following in the steps of the latter, always speaks in his MS. Pitture di Brescia of
Paolo Zoppo, but at the end of this volume, on f. 178, where he noted "corrections to
be added after revision," he several times refers to Paolo Foppa. The misfortune which
befell Paolo Zoppo at the end of his life— i.e. the destruction of the crystal bowl—pro-