Barnaba Agocchiari, known as “Barnaba da Modena”

Barnaba da Modena earned a reputation as the most prolific artist working in Genoa in the second half of the 14th century. The son of Ottonello di Barnaba and Francesca di Rolandino Cartari, he belonged, on his father’s side, to a Milanese family that had been living in Modena since the early 14th century and that subsequently acquired the surname Agocchiari¹. We do not know his date of birth, nor do we have any documentary evidence relating to his early career in Modena. The first documents to mention his name date to the early 1360s, by which time he had already been in Genoa for some years and had embarked on an independent artistic career. In 1360-1, he is recorded as entertaining relations with the painter Angelo da Firenze, whom he hired as an assistant, and in 1362 he draughted a similar contract with Barnaba di Bruno da Siena². Both these painters are known only from documents and thus their artistic personality is unknown. Yet despite the lack of information regarding the three men’s relations, the fact that they came from Emilia and Tuscany respectively points to the cosmopolitan nature of Genoa, a city open to commercial and cultural exchanges both with neighbouring regions and with the broader Mediterranean. This is also reflected in Barnaba’s career. His paintings were sought not only in Liguria but also in the Piedmont, in western Tuscany and even in Spain. In the above-mentioned document dated 1362, Barnaba is described as «civis et habitator Ianuae», but on the basis of paintings that can be dated earlier than 1367, we can confidently state that his initial training as an artist took place in Emilia, influenced by the lively naturalism and expressive charm of Bolognese painting embodied in the style first developed by Vitale da Bologna. After moving to Liguria, Barnaba appears to have had little further to do with his native Modena. In 1367 he is merely mentioned in his father’s will, and in 1380 he sold a house there, for which he received the final payment via his legal representative three years later. In the deed for the final payment, drawn up in Modena like all the others, he is expressly described as a citizen of Modena residing in Genoa³.

His initial output – exemplified by such panels as a Noli me tangere in the collection of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze and a Madonna and Child in the parish church of San Giovanni Battista in Lerma – reveals, alongside Emilian influence, an early interest in Sienese Gothic culture that was to grow as his style developed. In the course of his long career in Liguria, Barnaba was undoubtedly drawn to Avignon, home to the papal court at the time, where artistic tastes leaned strongly in the direction of Siena. After all, it was there that Simone Martini’s career had come to an end in 1344.

Barnaba was clearly a leading player in cultural circles in Genoa, as we can tell from a document dated 1364 regarding payment for a number of pictures («picturis et laboreriis») and a panel for the chapel in the Ducal Palace painted when Gabriele Adorno was doge. In connection with the network of commercial and political contacts of which Genoa was the hub, it is worth noting that Adorno was responsible for ratifying a treaty with Peter I of Cyprus in 1365 and trade treaties with the House of Aragon in 1366 and with Ferdinand I of Portugal in 1367⁴. The paintings in question have not survived, nor has Barnaba’s restoration of a panel in the Loggia dei Mercanti, or de’ Banchi, in 1370. Yet despite these gaps, a considerable number of his panel paintings have come down to us, several of them signed and dated, thus allowing us to reconstruct his career. The earliest surviving date appears at the foot of a Madonna and Child now in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (1367), followed by a panel formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin (1369, destroyed in World War II) and a third panel now in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin (1370)⁵.

Stylistic reasons suggest dating c. 1370 two important altarpieces, both signed, which Barnaba painted for Murcia Cathedral in Spain (and which are now displayed in the museum adjacent to the cathedral). The first depicts the Madonna and Child with Saints and Episodes of the Annunciation and the Last Judgement, while the second shows St. Lucy Enthroned with Stories from Her Life, Four Saints and the Crucifixion. The donors portrayed in the latter polyptych have been identified as Fernando Oller, the mayor of Murcia, and his wife Juana Pérez. The other altarpiece has a similar pair of kneeling donors identified as Queen Juana Manuel de Villena, the wife of Henry II of Castile, and an elderly figure who might be her father, Don Juan Manuel, or her cousin, Don Juan Sanchez Manuel, the governor of Murcia⁶. A panel in the National Gallery in London, signed and dated 1374, depicts two patrons alongside the Madonna and Child Enthroned, one of whom is recognisable, once again, as Queen Juana Manuel. Taken as a whole, this impressive collection of prestigious commissions points to Barnaba’s importance in Genoese artistic circles and to the spread of his stylistic influence along the Mediterranean’s western seaboard.

This aura of prestige was to pave the way for Barnaba to make his way into the Pisan art world, one of the most vibrant such circles in 14th century Tuscany, alongside Florence and Siena. Pisa, like Genoa, was a maritime republic involved both in trading throughout the Mediterranean and in enjoying close ties with Byzantium. In 1379, Giovanni di Pessino da Lucca, an envoy from Pisa Cathedral, travelled to Genoa to offer Barnaba a commission to complete the cycle of frescoes in the Camposanto depicting stories from the life of St. Rainerius, a cycle left unfinished by the Florentine painter Andrea Bonaiuti⁷. We do not know whether Barnaba ever made a start on the cycle, but it was completed by Antonio Veneziano a few years later. Previously, Barnaba had painted a Madonna and Child for the convent on San Francesco in Pisa (now in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo), where late 18th century sources also record the presence of a polyptych by his hand depicting the Coronation of the Virgin with Four Saints, whose whereabouts are currently unknown⁸. The most important surviving evidence for Barnaba’s activities in Pisa now consists of dismembered polyptych built around the so-called “Madonna of the Merchants” (also in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo)⁹, which can be dated to the early 1380s, and a coeval pentaptych depicting the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels and Four Saints, which he painted for the church of Santi Andrea e Lucia in Ripoli di Cascina. It is possible that these panel paintings were not painted in his Genoa workshop but while he was in Pisa, where he was bent on winning major commissions¹⁰.

The last time we hear of the painter in documents is 1383, in which year he was in touch with Leonardo di Cristoforo and Ottobono di Guano, the father of Genoa’s future Doge Barnaba Guano. A triptych depicting the Madonna and Child with Two Saints (now in the Museo di Sant’Agostino, Genoa) which includes portraits of Doge Nicolò Guarco, who held the office from 1378 to 1383, and his wife Lina, must have been completed by that date. The patrons’ presence provides a timeframe also for a polyptych depicting St. Bartholomew and Stories from His Life formerly in the Vallombrosan church of San Bartolomeo del Fossato (now in the Museo Diocesano, Genoa). The bishop portrayed in the central panel may be identified as Lanfranco Sacco, who held the office from 1377 to 1382. The painter’s last signed and dated work is a pentaptych in the church of San Dalmazio in Lavagnola, on which the date of 1386 can still be made out despite paint drops impairing its legibility. After this date we hear no further mention of Barnaba’s career, which probably came to an end by the end of the decade¹¹.

As we can see from the provenance of these various pictures, Barnaba da Modena worked for the main mendicant orders in Liguria, the Piedmont and Pisa; in fact, they appear to have vied for his attention. In addition to the Franciscans in Pisa and Alba and to the Dominicans in Rivoli, we should also mention the Augustinian Friars in Genoa, who commissioned the artist’s only surviving fresco, depicting the Last Judgement. Yet Barnaba’s popularity with both lay and religious patrons was due primarily to his considerable output on wood, painted with an impeccable mastery of technique that reveals his extraordinarily refined skill in decorating and embellishing gilded surfaces. Far from dying with him, Barnaba’s style, imbued with Emilian and Sienese culture with echoes of Byzantium, spread well beyond the borders of Liguria, proving to be a source of profound inspiration not only for such local painters as Niccolò da Voltri but also for a Sienese master of the calibre of Taddeo di Bartolo, who also worked in Pisa and Liguria and who proved capable of grasping the originality of Barnaba’s art – an art whose influence extended as far as Spain thanks to the master’s work for Murcia Cathedral.