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

—
CHAPTER II
1462, 1463 AND LATER
Foppa returns to Pavia in 1462— His work for the Abbot of Morimondo—Frescoes in
the Church of S. Tommaso—Summoned to Milan by Francesco Sforza—Takes a
house at Pavia for four years—Its position—Foppa again sent for by the Duke in
March, 1463— His frescoes in the hospital at Milan—Canvases there once wrongly
ascribed to Foppa— His frescoes in the Medici Bank—Drawing at Berlin—Giovanni
Maria da Brescia's engraving—The Regisole—The fresco at Hertford House.
On the completion of the fresco in the ceiling of the Chapel of St. John
Baptist at Genoa, Foppa most probably returned to Pavia, for, if we are to
believe the testimony of Bossi, the Church of the Carmine in that city contained
in his day a signed work by the master dated May, 1462.
The painting
was seen by Bossi in the second chapel on the right on entering the
church by the principal door, but this writer being chiefly concerned with the
inscription, mentions it only in the briefest terms as "in Capella S.
Bernardini " ;^
then follows the inscription without further comment and without
any clue as to its position in the chapel :
Istud opus Baptista Comes celeberrime condens
Digne Monasterii Morimundi Malleta Pastor
In Christi eterno genitricis honore Marie
Te facis eternum divinis laudibus unus
Vincentius de Fopa pinxit anno 1462 de mense madii.-
From this brief notice later writers have inferred that Foppa was employed
1 Memoriae Ticinenses Novantiquae, f. 196. Girolamo Bossi, who left numerous
MSS. (now in the University Library) relating to Pavia, was born there in 1588 and
died in 1646. The MS. of the "Chiese" was his latest work, and contains notices of
events up to the year of the writer's death. The Mem. Ticin. Novantiq. is earlier, but
the precise date cannot be determined. The MS. received additions in the eighteenth
century by Siro Rho.
^ "Thou Battista Malleta, renowned Count and worthy Abbot of the Monastery of
Morimondo, by causing this work to be produced to the eternal honour of Christ's
mother Mary, makest thyself immortal among other men in praising God. Vincenzo
de Fopa painted it, in the month of May of the year 1462."
32