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

Chap. X. CONCLUSION 265
heritage which its forerunners have given to it."' Yet though we have so few
outward indications of Foppa's influence at Brescia, there can be little doubt
that his work as a pioneer and teacher there prepared the way for those who
were to come after, and indirectly laid the foundations of that brilliant school
dominated by Romanino and Moretto, which flourished at Brescia throughout
the sixteenth century, and was the outcome and natural development of the
school formed by that transitional group of artists who were themselves the
immediate pupils of Foppa.
Our object throughout this volume has not been to over-exalt the artistic
importance of the master or to exaggerate the extent of his influence, but
rather to set him at last in his proper light from the historical point of view.
With the aid of documents, which alone are able to give us some idea of the
circumstances of his life and surroundings, we have endeavoured to make this
study a true record of the life of a North Italian artist in the fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries, and by giving reproductions of all the master's
paintings, so far as they are at present known, we trust that to some extent
our object of allowing him to speak for himself in his works may have been
attained.
We have carefully avoided all polemical questions and have purposely
abstained from criticism, for, as this must always depend more or less on
individual bias, we hold that in a work which for the first time collates all the
known material for the study of Vincenzo Foppa's life and works any personal
note would be out of place.
It has been our aim to order this material logically, so far as lay in our
power, to correct certain
erroneous statements which have gained currency in
former biographical notices of the painter, and to lay a sure foundation on
which future art-historians might safely build.
As a contribution to the history of the early Lombard school — perhaps the
least known of all the schools of painting in Italy—as an introduction to the
study of Vincenzo Foppa, and as a forerunner of future critical biographies of
the master, we offer it to the consideration of students of this epoch of painting
in
North Italy.
^
Conway, Early Flemish Artists, p. 234.