Cardinal Nicholas of Rouen

1351 · Chapter House, San Niccolò, Treviso

portrait

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.

Loading map…

About the Artist

Tommaso Da Modena

1325 – 1379

Italian painter, one of the leading artists of his day in northern Italy. His earthy, humane, and naturalistic style is well seen in his series of frescos of famous Dominicans (signed and dated 1352) in the Chapter House of S. Niccolò in Treviso. The saintly figures are shown meditating, writing, and reading (the first dated example of spectacles being worn appears here) and Tommaso shows a remarkable ability to depict intellectual activity. His reputation was such that work was commissioned from him by the emperor Charles IV in Bohemia, and two panels by Tommaso are still in Karlstein Castle, near Prague. It is unlikely that he visited Bohemia, but there is some kinship between his work and that of his leading Bohemian contemporary, Master Theoderic.

View all works →