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

46 VINCENZO FOPPA
the portraits of the Duke Francesco Sforza, of his illustrious consort and
their
sons." ^
Further on, Filarete speaks of the great improvements that are still to be
made when all the houses which obstruct the light in front have been pulled
down, and especially when all the paintings have been executed, "about
which we conferred together with Pigello Portinari, who directs and manages
all the business they have at Milan, with whom I had many discussions as to
what was to be painted,"^
It is to be assumed that all was finished by 1467, for some German
pilgrims who came to Milan just after the death of Francesco Sforza speak of
it as "ein kostlich Haus hetten des Kosman de Medici Kaufleut innen."^
Filarete mentions the one fresco by Foppa which was completed at that
date as the "image of Trajan with other figures." Vasari, who makes no
mention of the palace in his first edition, describes the subject of this painting
in his second as episodes from the life of Trajan by the hand of *' Vincenzo di
Zoppa, a painter of no small repute at that date and in that district,"* the same
master, therefore, whom he mentions as having executed the frescoes in the
hospital and as being the first painter in the land, an artist who by common
consent has been identified with Vincenzo Foppa, the substitution of "Z"
for " F " being obviously a mistake. Vasari's version of the subject— episodes
from the life of Trajan—has been adopted by all later writers, and if the
biographer was correct in his statement, it is probable that the fresco represented
the story of Trajan and the widow, a subject frequently treated in art,*
famous Romans" in the loggia on the left, but names neither the painter of these works
nor the architect of the building.
*
"La loggia che e a mano manca alia entrata si e di lunghezza braccia 28
e larga braccia 8, la quale si dipinge per mano di uno bono maestro per noma
chiamato V. de Foppa, il quale per infine al presente ha fatto il simulacro di Traiano
degnissimo e ben fatto con altre figure per hornamento e cosi 1' a a dipignere tutta
questa partita a figure e imagini di imperadori, li quali saranno otto e 1' imagine e
simulacro dello ill'. Francesco Sforza e della ill'"*. Madonna e figliuoli " (Bk. XXV,
680 and foil.).
- '* Del quale ragionamo insieme con Pigello Portinari, el quale regge e guida tutto
el traffico che anno a Milano, col quale ebbi ragionamento di quello che depignere
s' aveva" {ibid., 686).
^ "A sumptuous house for the merchants of Cosmo de' Medici" (see Bibl. des
literarischen Vereins, VII, 1844, p. 193: "Des bohmischen Herrn Leo's von Rozmital
. . . Pilgerreise durch die Abendlande, 1465-67," etc.).
* " Pittore in quel tempo e in quel paese di non piccola stima " (11^ p. 345, ed. 1568).
^ Professor Giacomo Boni, in a very important article on this subject, reproduces
numerous compositions bearing upon it, including two panels of the school of Verona
in the National Gallery (see Ntiova Antologia, November, 1906, pp. 1-39).