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

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50 VINCENZO FOPPA
connection with the first-named master. Dr. Lionello Venturi, on the
other hand, while ascribing it to Ercole, admits that an inexperienced eye
might easily fall into the mistake of attributing it to Jacopo Bellini on account
of its remarkable affinity with him.^ We have reproduced it here because of
the manifest links which it shows with Foppa's picture in the National Gallery
as well as with a work of his bottega—the predella of the altarpiece of S. Maria
di Castello at Savona, because of the close connection between these works
and Giovanni Maria da Brescia's engraving, which was undoubtedly founded
upon a composition by Vincenzo, and also because of its possible bearing
upon the fresco in the Medici Bank. We are at a loss to understand why a
drawing by Ercole Roberti should have any connection with these works;
nor, so far as we know, do those who ascribe the sketch to that master
attempt to offer any explanation of these difficulties. Dr. Frizzoni's attribution
seems therefore from every point of view the most probable, and we
should certainly be disposed to reject the name of the Ferrarese master and
to substitute for it that of Vincenzo Foppa.
Filarete refers to other frescoes in the Medici Bank—episodes from the
Story of Hercules, the History of Susanna in
terra verde, and the Virtues
but mentions no painter's name in connection with them. Some part of the
pictorial decoration seems to have been still existing in the second half of
the eighteenth century, for Albuzzio writing about 1776 observed that most
of the frescoes had then been recently whitewashed.
De Pagave, who gives a long account of the palace as it was in his day
(1808), states that one fresco only was then existing in the cortile, which
might be regarded as the remains of the original decoration (or, as he puts it,
"of the paintings ordered by Michelozzo "), though much decayed, and he
proceeds to describe it as follows : "It represents a business man in his office
sitting astride and apparently reading, though whether a letter or a book is not
clear ; and this painting proves that Cosimo had his bank here as stated by
Vasari."^ Cassina, writing in 1840, when the building was owned by the
heirs of Count Vismara, also refers to this, as the sole surviving fresco in the
courtyard ;* and it was still existing in 1862, when it was mentioned by
Mongeri as a youth seated surrounded by books, commonly called Pico della
Mirandola, though it might also, he thought, be a figure having some reference
to the bank.^ Here Mongeri evidently adopted De Pagave's view that
it
must represent "a business man " connected with the bank.
It is to be assumed that the fresco mentioned by all these writers is
*
Op. ctt., p. 165.
- Memorie, etc., de' Pittori . . . Milanesi {copy in the V. and A. Museum, f. 44).
= Note to Vasari's Life of Michelozzo, Vol. IV, p. 331, ed. 1808.
* Fabbriche di Milano, Vol. I, text to plate 13. ' Perseveranza, December 5, 1862.