TOMMASO DA MODENA

Tommaso da Modena was commissioned to paint a fresco cycle in the Chapter House of San Niccolò in Treviso representing the famous saints of the Dominicans. The cycle contains 40 monks, each in his own cell, sitting at a writing desk.

This series of famous members of the Dominican order constitutes one of the most impressive examples of physiognomic realism from this period.

The invention of eyeglasses, probably in the late thirteenth century, allowed people to peer at nature through a new kind of lens. The Chapter House at Treviso presents one of the most “scholastic” of all Gothic fresco cycles, being an idealized portrait gallery of members of the Dominican order. But it also represents an achievement of scholarship, of the technology needed to study, which included not only desks, books, and pens, but recently invented optical instruments like lenses. Cardinal Nicholas of Rouen peers at his text, as though looking at a minute marginal drawing, through a single lens. Other figures in the series perform the age-old scholar activity of comparing one text with another. The artist had all his models, many of them inherited or stolen from others, within the valuable pages of his model book.

Tommaso da Modena was commissioned to paint a fresco cycle in the Chapter House of San Niccolò in Treviso representing the famous saints of the Dominicans. The cycle contains 40 monks, each in his own cell, sitting at a writing desk. The picture shows one of them, St Albert the Great, the master of Thomas of Aquinas.

This series of famous members of the Dominican order constitutes one of the most impressive examples of physiognomic realism from this period.