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

20 VINCENZO FOPPA
Italy, and their chief cities of Milan and Pavia became the centre of a great
art movement, a focus of strenuous effort and boundless activity, drawing to
itself artists from far and near by the power of an irresistible attraction. And
what the Visconti had initiated attained its highest development under the
Sforza, whose reign, covering the last fifty years of the fifteenth century,
marks the most glorious epoch in the annals of Lombard art.
To this great centre of activity came Vincenzo Foppa in the early years of
the reign of Francesco Sforza as Duke of Milan. The painter may have
chosen Pavia for his abode in preference to Milan, not only on account of the
prospects of remunerative employment in the Castello and the Certosa, but
also perhaps because of its convenient situation and pure air ;
for Pavia, the
" Urbs saluberrimi aeris " of Petrarch' and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini," lying
amid luxuriant vegetation on the banks of the Ticino, had always been regarded
as peculiarly healthy.
When Foppa first settled in the city, he found there a group of native artists
exercising their craft whose names we meet with constantly in contemporary
records at Pavia. In the Archivio Notarile no less than thirty-five documents
are preserved relating to painters in this one year,
1456, from which we gather
that Foppa must have found at least eight colleagues in art working in the
city. First among this group of painters was Giorgio Mangano, a member of
a noble and distinguished Pavian family, who is known to have executed works
in the Certosa as early as 1434.^ Pavian writers on art were only acquainted
with this one notice of him,^ which we are now able to supplement. He was
the son of a certain Simone, and husband of a Pavian lady of good birth,
Caracossa Morbio, whom he had married as early as February 26, 141 7,
and who made her will on April 14, 1456, dying without children. The
painter owned a large property at Mornico, in the district of Oltrepo, and at
Buttirago, in the Campagna sottana of Pavia. ^ His life must have been a
long one, for a record of July 11, 1470 (a receipt for rent), proves that he was
still alive at that date.
The well-known family of Vaprio, which gave so many painters to Milan, is
represented at Pavia by two artists, Giovanni and Nicola, sons of a Giacomo
da Vaprio. After being first employed in the cathedral at Milan, ^ they
settled at Pavia. The earliest notice there of Giovanni is of 1443, in which
year, on June 21, we find that he entered into partnership with Giovanni
* Op. cit., p. 263.
-
Oratio Prima (Pro OEcum. Concil.), p. 27, pars i.
^
See Magenta, / Visconti e gli Sforza nel Castello di Pavia, Vol. II.
•
Moiraghi, Almanacco Sacro Pavese, 1897, p. 197.
* The district lying east of Pavia.
^ Caffi, Arch. Star. Lamb., 1878, p. 540.