It must therefore be admitted, after a comparison of the passages adduced, that there is only a single Brescian artist in question, that he is not to be referred to so remote a period as reported, and that he could not have painted in the year 1407 of the vulgar era, inasmuch as he very nearly reaches the beginning of the sixteenth century. We may for the same reasons dismiss from history those specious accounts interspersed by Lomazzo, asserting that Foppa drew the proportions of his figures from Lysippus; that Bramante acquired the art of perspective from his writings, out of which he composed a treatise of essential utility to Raffaello, to Polidoro, and to Gaudenzio; and that Albert Durer and Daniel Barbaro availed themselves, by plagiarism, of Foppa's inventions. Such assertions, already in a great measure refuted by the learned Consiglier Pagave in his notes to Vasari,[43] first took their rise in supposing that the age of Foppa was anterior to Piero della Francesca, from whom perspective in Italy may truly be said to have dated its improvement. Next to him Foppa was one of the first who cultivated the same art, as clearly appears from the little picture already mentioned at Bergamo. In Milan there are some of his works remaining at the hospital, executed upon canvass, and a martyrdom of S. Sebastiano, at Brera, in fresco, which, for design of the naked figure, for the natural air of the heads, for its draperies and for its tints, is very commendable, though greatly inferior in point of attitude and expression. I have frequently doubted whether there were two Vincenzi of Brescia, since Lomazzo, besides Vincenzo Foppa, whom, against the received opinion, he makes a native of Milan, marks down in his index a Vincenzio Bresciano, of whom I am not aware that he makes the slightest mention throughout the whole of his work. I am led to suspect, that meeting with some works bearing the signature of _Vincenzio Bresciano_, without the surname of Foppa, beyond the limits of Milan, the historian, fixed in his persuasion that Foppa must be a native of Milan, set down two artists of the name instead of a single one, and that this, moreover, was perhaps an old prejudice, prevailing in the Milanese School, and which Lomazzo was unable to dismiss. National errors and prejudices are always the last to be renounced. In the Notizia Morelli, a Vincenzo Bressano the elder is twice mentioned, an adjunct, which, if not a surname, as it was in the instance of Minzocchi, may have arisen from some false report connected with the two Vincenzi Bresciani. Indeed we have repeatedly observed that the names of artists have been very frequently drawn, not from authentic writings, but from common report, which generally presents us with a worse account of what has been ill heard or understood.
Archaeology Brief
The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. IV (of 6) — Part 103
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