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

22 VINCENZO POPPA
place the death of Leonardo about 1470/ but documents prove that he was
still living in 1499, and that his brother Antonio survived until 1502.
These were the painters whom Foppa found on his arrival at Pavia. What
their relations with him were we have been unable to discover, but our
documents testify to the fact that some connection existed between him and
Leonardo Vidolenghi and his pupil Antonio Rovati," a painter whose name is
first met with in a deed of June 19, 1455.'
The endowments of these eight masters just named, to judge from the few
works by them still in existence, were not of a high order, and only a
comparatively humble place can be assigned to them in the history of art ;
yet
the very fact of the existence of such a group of painters proves that Pavia
was no unfruitful soil, and that artists must have found abundant employment
there at this early date.
At Milan, on the other hand, Foppa must have found a school already
flourishing and firmly established, a school deriving in its origin perhaps from
the teaching of Michelino da Besozzo, known also as Michelino da Pavia, *
and other contemporary artists, and owing much to the determining influence
exercised by Pisanello during the years when he was painting in the Castello
at Pavia, and by the Tuscan Masolino during his sojourn in Lombardy.
Among the painters known to us by name who were independent masters
suggested
that Leonardo Vidolenghi may be the author of the picture which Alizeri
mentioned as in the Palazzo Municipale at Genoa, representing the Madonna with
SS. John Baptist, Erasmus, Francis, and Clara, signed "Opus Leonard! de Papia
MCCCCLXVI " (Alizeri, Notizie de' Professori del disegno, etc., L 261, and Magenta,
op. cit., L 362 ; see also Suida, Genua, p. 75). The picture is now in the Palazzo
Bianco, but is certainly inferior to the fresco at Pavia.
'
Moiraghi, Alnian., p. 281.
^ See Appendix U, Docs. Nos. 8 and 16.
' The documents here referred to, which are all in the Archivio Notarile at Pavia, will
shortly be published in a work now in preparation dealing with the painters of Pavia,
by Rodolfo Maiocchi, d.d.
* In 1388 Michelino executed in the second cloister of S. Pietro in Ciel d'oro at
Pavia a series of frescoes dealing with the history of St. Augustine which were
destroyed soon after 1670 (see Cod. diplom. Ord. E. S. Augustini Papice, Vol. L PP- I43)
144), and in August, 1394, he painted a picture for the Chapel of S. Nicolo da Tolentino
in the Church of Santa Mostiola, a work which was signed and dated {ibid., p. 200).
A signed work by him bearing the date 1418 in the Treasury of the Cathedral at Milan
proves that he was an artist of no mean order. In the Codex Picenardiano (quoted by
Malaguzzi, Pitt, Lomb., p. 297) Michelino is spoken of as a painter of equal merit
as Gentile da Fabriano ; Uberto Decembrio (d. 1427) praises him highly {Cod. Ainbrosiano,
quoted Mai., p. 207), and Lomazzo (Lib. VI, ch. 32, p. 359) calls him tlie
principal painter of his day in Italy. Marcantonio Michiel in 1530 saw a book of his
drawings in the house of Gabriele Vendramin (Anonimo, ed. Frizzoni, p. 221).