Niccolò di Tommaso of Florence, St Bridget of Sweden's First Painter

Is it merely a coincidence that the earliest extant paitings of St Bridget’s Vision of the Nativity are by Niccolò di Tommaso? A combination of independent technical and documentary evidence seems to give a striking answer. Comparative studies of technical aspects of Italian medieval painting has enabled the definition of anomalies in a group of Niccolò’s oeuvre, hitherto unnoticed. In the context of his contemporaries, a possible interpretation of this group – including his paintings of the Nativity – is that they were executed outside of his native Florence. A re-reading of the documentary sources connect them with Naples and makes a new dating of Niccolò’s Neapolitan sojourn necessary. He must have been there in the period 1373-75, not around 1371 as thought till now. As a consequence, he must have met Bridget at the Angevine court in Naples in the spring of 1373 – i.e. just after she had received her revelation of the Nativity, and a few months before her death. Niccolò was apparently involved in the early visual propaganda towards Bridget’s canonization. Among other things, he made the altarpiece – identified here – for Bridget’s first chapel in her former house at Piazza Navona in Rome. The article discusses the evidence for the artist’s Neapolitan sojourn and his probable encounter with the future Saint.