Tomaso da Modena (Hardcover)

This is the definitive study of one of the greatest artists of the fourteenth century, Tomaso de Modena. His work was remarkable for its vivid expression and its varied imagery, derived from the art of the University of Bologna, its illuminated manuscripts, and the studies of Dominican and other friars. Tomaso is even more remarkable for his interest in new technologies, such as spectacles, knitting and botany, and in the aesthetic advances associated with them, light and shade, picture space, and the elaborate court dress of the age. Tomaso's greatness was recognised by the Emperor Charles IV, for whose palace in Bohemia he painted his most lavish panels. The book explores Tomaso's surviving work through reconstructions of its environment, and the structure of its support and frame. Robert Gibbs considers the political and economic background to Tomaso's art, its souces and influence on other artists, the nature of the origins of portraiture, and the relationship between north and south Europe.