BARNABA DA MODENA. — A Modenese painter active in the second half of the fourteenth century. He is first mentioned in 1364, when he decorated the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. He had already been in Liguria for several years, and it may be assumed that he was not very young, given the importance of the undertaking. In 1367 he signed the Madonna, also executed in Genoa and now in the Städel Institute in Frankfurt. Another Madonna, now in Berlin, is dated 1369. From Liguria he moved to Piedmont: evidence of his stay in this region is provided by the works left at Rivoli and at Alba, in the church of S. Giovanni Battista, executed approximately between 1370 and about 1377. In 1380 he was summoned to Pisa to finish the frescoes with the Life of S. Ranieri in the Camposanto. Before going to Pisa, he stopped, as a document shows, in Modena. He remained in Tuscany for only a short time and returned to Genoa, where he is documented in 1383: this is the last certain date associated with him. Many of his works are found in the galleries of Piedmont and Liguria, in foreign museums, and in private collections. Among the latter we may mention the Madonna in the Schiff Giorgini collection in Rome, signed Barnabas de Mutina pinxii, to be dated approximately to 1367, which reveals his closest affinities with the Madonna in Berlin and with that of S. Matteo in Tortona.
The great majority of B.’s paintings that have come down to us reproduce an archaizing motif of the Madonna and Child. They are solemn images in majestically structured forms, with garments all edged in gold. They have rounded faces painted in extremely smooth and vivid tones; yet in the sfumato shading there reappear the somewhat dull and seemingly browned colors of the Madonneri, heirs to late Byzantine art. Despite the apparent monotony of the schemes, however, the Modenese master was not without highly painterly qualities. B. also painted several small panels, such as the one with the Ascension attributed to him by Venturi, formerly in the Sterbini collection in Rome, and another with Pentecost in the National Gallery in London, likewise conceived in the old-fashioned manner, with the figures arranged symmetrically.