VILIGELMO. - Sculptor of the 12th century, active in Modena. He can be considered the founder of Romanesque sculpture in Upper Italy and in particular of the Emilian school, which recent studies have by now clearly distinguished from the Lombard one.
There is no documentary evidence whatsoever, but his name is read on the plaque commemorating the foundation of the cathedral of Modena in 1099 ("inter scultores quanto sis dignus onore claret scultura nunc Wiligelme tua"). By comparison with the figures of the prophets Enoch and Elijah that flank the inscription, there can be attributed to him with every certainty the four reliefs with stories from Genesis, the friezes and the figures of the Prophets on the jambs of the main portal, the two torch-bearing putti and some capitals of the loggia, that is, the greatest part of the sculptures of the facade, which he must have executed between 1100 and 1106, at the latest by 1110. The other sculptures on the exterior of the cathedral of Modena belong to various disciples and continuators, sometimes even very original and with a partly different training, as do those of the portal of the abbey of Nonantola and also those of the old facade of the cathedral of Cremona, which are sometimes attributed to him.
The art of V. has no precedents in Emilia or in the neighboring regions, nor can it be derived — as is the opinion of some — from the Ottonian art of Lombardy, which differs from it profoundly in the courtly and "illustrious" character of its language. V. in fact expresses himself in a language of "vernacular" structure, which is called Romanesque just as "Romance" are called the dialects that in this time are rising throughout Western Europe to literary dignity. Some stylistic elements, such as the use of the "corded" fold, appear to be related to the sculpture of the early Aquitanian school, which only a few years earlier had given its proofs with reliefs, at first (St. Saturninus of Toulouse, 1096) clearly volumetric, then (cloister of Moissac, finished in 1100) more articulately plastic. But this is not enough to prove a direct descent, and certainly far more decisive for the formation of V. was the study of provincial Roman sculpture on the stelae and sarcophagi of the Mutinensian necropolis.