FOPPA, VINCENZO. — Painter, born in Brescia around 1427 and died in the same city in 1515 or 1516. Initially perhaps a pupil in the Bembo workshop in Brescia, although he later underwent the stylistic influence of Jacopo Bellini and Mantegna, he succeeded in creating his own pictorial language, characterized by great monumentality, chiaroscuro strength, and an almost Tuscan purity of draughtsmanship. For more than thirty years he lived in Pavia, where he had moved with his family in 1456.
From that same year dates the dramatic Crucifixion in the Carrara Gallery in Bergamo, his first signed work. He subsequently worked in Milan, executing for Francesco Sforza in the Banco Mediceo the large fresco The Justice of Trajan, of which only the preparatory drawings are known (Federico Museum in Berlin; Ashmolean Museum in Oxford), and frescoing for Pigello Portinari Stories of St. Peter Martyr and the Four Doctors of the Church in the Portinari Chapel, begun by Michelozzo in 1462 and completed in 1468, in S. Eustorgio. Only recently has this cycle of frescoes been restored to F., and it is considered one of the most important groups of works in his career. In 1475 he executed the great altarpiece for the church of S. Maria delle Grazie in Bergamo, now in the Brera Picture Gallery, and in 1485 two frescoes depicting, respectively, The Madonna and Child between SS. John the Baptist and John the Evangelist and The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, both in the same gallery, having come from the demolished church of S. Maria di Brera. Works by F., who is considered the founder of the Milanese school, are preserved in the Sforza Castle in Milan and in the museums of Berlin, Glasgow, and London. He had various pupils, among them Bergognone and Vincenzo Civerchio, and exerted a great influence on Butinone, Zenale, Zanetto Bugatto, Bonifacio Bembo, and Lodovico Brea. According to Lomazzo, he is also said to have written a treatise on perspective.
