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

Chap. X. PAOLO ZOPPO & " V. FOPPA THE YOUNGER" 261
or nephew of Vincenzo II Vecchio. We have stated elsewhere,^ and must
emphatically reiterate here, that no second artist of the name of Vincenzo
Foppa ever existed,^ that our painter was called "il Vecchio," not to distinguish
him from a younger artist of the name, but on account of the
advanced age to which he attained. It cannot be proved, as we have seen, that
either of Foppa's sons was a painter; neither of them bore the name Vincenzo,
and both, we are bound to assume for reasons already stated, predeceased
their father.
bably caused his name to be long remembered at Brescia ; hence later writers who had
heard of the existence of the painter Zoppo but knew nothing of a Paolo Foppa,
misread in documents and possibly also in signed paintings the name of the one for
that of the other, and thus the miniature painter Paolo Zoppo came to be confounded
with the fresco painter Paolo Foppa, namely, Paolo Caylina.
This confusion between the two artists was perpetuated by all Brescian guide-books
from 1700 onwards, but the statements of these writers do not concern us, for they are
all traceable to the initial error to which we have referred, the mistaken reading of
the MSS., and each writer merely repeats the words of his predecessors. We have
already alluded to Paolo Zoppo's friendship with Giovanni Bellini, assuming that he
has been rightly identified with the " Messer Paolo Zoppo" mentioned by Bembo,
who, however, does not speak of him as a painter (see Gaye, Carteggio, II, p. 76,
No. xxiv). Some writers give the date of Paolo Zoppo's death as 1515, probably
confusing him with Vincenzo Foppa; others state that he was still living in 1530, a
more probable date since Gritti, the Doge for whom he is said to have painted the
celebrated crystal bowl, was not elected until 1523.
' See the Burl. Mag., March, 1903, and Bryan's Dictionary of Painters, ed. 1904 ;
articles " Caylina " and " Foppa."
^ The fable relating to "Vincenzo Foppa the younger" owes its existence to a
series of mistakes which must be traced to Zamboni in the first instance. This writer
discovered in the Bulletario della Citta the entry of a payment made to Foppa on July
16, 1495, which (as we saw in chap, viii, p. 190) was the payment referred to in the
Provvisione of July 12 of that year. But Zamboni, being unacquainted with this
latter entry and the previous one of May 15, and believing that Foppa died in 1492,
suggested that the sum might have been paid to his heir. Zamboni's suggestion
became a fact in the hands of later writers, and Brugnoli (in his guide-book of 1827),
referring to this entry of July 16, 1495, stated definitely (p. 245) that the money was paid
to Foppa's heir. Some years later Sala in his guide to the pictures of Brescia mentioned
a painting in the collection of Signor Giovanni Averoldi inscribed as follows: " 1495
depicta per Magistrum Vincentium Brixiensem," and from that time forward the
identity of a painter, Vincenzo Foppa the younger, was established and his name was
included in all histories and encyclopedias of painting. If the inscription on this
picture was authentic, it is possible, as already noted (chap, vii, p. 188), that it was by
Foppa himself. Several painters of the name of Vincenzo were working at Brescia in the
sixteenth century, as will be seen in Appendix I, Note 5, to which the reader is referred
for further information on this point, but none of them, so far as we have been able to
discover, were related to Foppa.