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

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Chap. I. FIRST DOCUMENTARY NOTICE OF FOPPA 27
Caylina, on the other hand, to which family Foppa's wife belonged, were of
much humbler origin, and in the Brescian Libri d'Estimo we meet with tailors,
painters, locksmiths, and other craftsmen of this name throughout the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A painter Paolo Caylina executed works
for the Brescia Government at different periods up to 1475, when his name disappears
from the registers, and there is
no doubt, as will be seen later, that this
painter was identical with Foppa's associate at Pavia.
According to this document of May 15, 1458, Foppa and his companion
paid to a certain " Nicolo de' Franceschi, son of the late Giorgio, citizen and
inhabitant of Venice," the sum of lire 22, soldi 9, denari i,
the recipient professing
himself satisfied therewith ; at the same time Master Vincenzo and Paolo
de' Calino acknowledged that all their claims upon Nicolo de' Franceschi had
also been discharged to the full. We do not know what the question at issue
between the two Brescian painters and this Venetian ' may have been, and
the document scarcely justifies the late Don Pietro Moiraghi's supposition that
it must necessarily have referred to a work of art." We gather that the
disputants had agreed to submit their differences to the decision of an
arbitrator, and had chosen for this office Giacomo Codazza of Pavia, the
deed appointing him having been drawn up by the notary Domenico de'
Tinctoribus^ in this same month of May, 1458. But before Codazza could
intervene the matter had been arranged, and it is to this amicable settlement
that our document refers. Among the witnesses was the Pavian painter
Giacomino son of Giovanni de Meliis, and the deed was drawn up in the
house of Giacomo Tibolderiis of Mortara, a fact which tends to connect Paolo
Calino with an extant painting; for in this year 1458, an altarpiece signed
*' Paulus Brisien[s]is " was executed for the Church of S. Albino at Mortara.*
• We have no clue as to the status of this Nicolo de' Franceschi ; was he himself a
painter, or a patron who commissioned a picture from the Brescian master? or was it
purely a matter of business to which the document refers? We cannot tell, but it might
perhaps furnish a further indirect proof of Foppa's connection with Venice and sojourn
there at an early period of his career,
namely, during his years of apprenticeship.
-
This writer conjectured that the document referred to the Bergamo Crucifixion (see
Moiraghi in A/manacco, 1897, P- 333)' He assumed that this picture was the centre of
a triptych, the wings of which he believed
he had discovered in two small panels in the
Gallery at Bergamo {ibid., p. 332), once ascribed to " Paolo Bresciano" (Fenaroli, Dizionario
degli Artisti Bresciani, p. 73), though they are in point of fact the work of a local
painter of Bergamo. It is scarcely necessary to add that they have nothing to do
with Foppa's panel, which never formed part of a triptych.
^ The deeds of this notary have all perished, and we are unable therefore to explain
the cause of the dispute referred to in this document (No. 2).
^ The picture was painted for the Church of S. Albino, but was later transferred to
S. Lorenzo at Mortara. The signature, which is on the central panel, is as follows