THOMAS OF MODENA. - Painter and miniaturist, b. in Modena around 1325 to Barisino dei Barisini, d. there before 1379.
He worked predominantly and on several occasions in Treviso, where in 1352 he signed the vast decoration of the Chapter House of the Dominicans at S. Niccolò, then in Mantua and in all likelihood in Trent, and thereafter in Modena. His formation was completed in the Bolognese milieu, whence a certain Vitalesque accent in his youthful works alongside Sienese motifs; but above all he underwent deep and lasting influences from the modes of miniature painting.
The taste for the icastic vividness of representation caught from the immediate freshness of realistic motifs, so characteristic of Bolognese miniature painting engaged in the illustration of legal texts, T. transfers to the broader scale of grand sacred narrative. He thus enriches the composition with a quantity of pleasing episodes, and above all deepens the psychological knowledge of his figures, by means of a most penetrating investigation of the mimetic values of gesture, of the muscular contraction of faces, with results that may be defined as a veritable "mimic impressionism." The highest example of this is the cycle with the Stories of St. Ursula (Museo di Treviso), rich in dramatic entanglements; while earlier a most interesting "anthology of characters" may be considered the aforementioned decoration of the Chapter House, with figures of the Dominican Order. For the attainment of this eloquent vividness of his figurative discourse, T. makes use of a most delicate modelling in coloured chiaroscuro, which, albeit within the limited sphere of "local colour," is a certain forerunning of tonal effects. Notable is the importance of T. for the further development of Venetian painting and for the formation of Avanzo and of Altichiero, who move on a higher and broader plane.
Bibliography
Luigi Coletti