Scenes of the Virgin; The Trinity; The Crucifixion

Barnaba da Modena was a leading painter in Liguria and Piedmont who maintained strong ties to Byzantine pictorial traditions even as Tuscan innovations spread across Italy. This 1374 panel combining Scenes of the Virgin, the Trinity, and the Crucifixion demonstrates the multi-narrative format favored for private devotion in late Trecento northern Italy. Now in the National Gallery, London, it exemplifies the syncretic visual culture of Genoese Gothic painting.

Painted in egg tempera on panel with extensive gold tooling, Barnaba's work combines Byzantine-inflected facial types and linear drapery patterns with a Western Gothic spatial arrangement, using punch-work haloes and incised decoration throughout.