Comment on St. Thomas Aquinas icon by Theophilia
I generally love your work, but this particular piece, although beautiful, is — well, almost too beautiful: beautiful in the wrong way. If it were not for the conventional attributes (and the label), one wouldn’t take it for a St. Thomas at all, but for St. Hyacinth or some younger Dominican.
One may conveniently quote GKC: “Saint Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet … The appearance or bodily presence of Saint Thomas Aquinas is really easier to resurrect than that of many who lived before the age of portrait painting. … (H)is stature was more remarked than his stoutness; but, above all, that his head was quite powerful enough to dominate his body. And his head was of a very real and recognisable type, to judge by the traditional portraits and the personal descriptions. It was that sort of head with the heavy chin and jaws, the Roman nose and the big rather bald brow, which, in spite of its fullness, gives also a curious concave impression of hollows here and there, like caverns of thought. Napoleon carried that head upon a short body. Mussolini carries it today, upon a rather taller but equally active one. It can be seen in the busts of several Roman Emperors, and occasionally above the shabby shirt-front of an Italian waiter; but he is generally a head waiter.”
This is very fine, but I know you can do better. Cui multum datum est, multum quæretur ab eo ; et cui commendaverunt multum, plus petent ab eo.
One may conveniently quote GKC: “Saint Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet … The appearance or bodily presence of Saint Thomas Aquinas is really easier to resurrect than that of many who lived before the age of portrait painting. … (H)is stature was more remarked than his stoutness; but, above all, that his head was quite powerful enough to dominate his body. And his head was of a very real and recognisable type, to judge by the traditional portraits and the personal descriptions. It was that sort of head with the heavy chin and jaws, the Roman nose and the big rather bald brow, which, in spite of its fullness, gives also a curious concave impression of hollows here and there, like caverns of thought. Napoleon carried that head upon a short body. Mussolini carries it today, upon a rather taller but equally active one. It can be seen in the busts of several Roman Emperors, and occasionally above the shabby shirt-front of an Italian waiter; but he is generally a head waiter.”
This is very fine, but I know you can do better. Cui multum datum est, multum quæretur ab eo ; et cui commendaverunt multum, plus petent ab eo.
Hahah, it's actually interesting that you remark on this. I have my own various reasons for having done what I did--which I shall explain presently--but first I must add that I was actually reading G.K. Chesterton's biography of St. Thomas Aquinas at the time, and that very paragraph that you quoted actually inspired me in terms of the saint's physical appearance. The references I used were, indeed, from Napoleon and Mussolini, so I hunted for various portraits of them to use as references. My idea in depicting him like this (as, indeed, I do with all of the saints I have so far depicted) is that I imagine them in the icon as being in Heaven (hence, the gold background, symbolizing eternal light in iconography). And I also think that in Heaven we won't look *quite* how we look on earth, which is to say, that we will look more like ourselves (indeed, the most like ourselves, because we will fully be ourselves, and our souls will not be veiled behind our body as on earth, but will indeed mirror and show forth the soul even more clearly. It'll be like wearing our souls on our sleeves. 
) I apologize if I have not expressed myself well, but I do hope you understand what I mean. In any case, this is how I was hoping to depict St. Thomas Aquinas--young, more as himself than the older, more bull-like man in his later years here. Or, if you will, this is how I imagine St. Thomas Aquinas more platonically...in that I hope to have expressed the gentleness, shyness, and kind innocence of his soul through his appearance. I hope that makes sense. 
) I apologize if I have not expressed myself well, but I do hope you understand what I mean. In any case, this is how I was hoping to depict St. Thomas Aquinas--young, more as himself than the older, more bull-like man in his later years here. Or, if you will, this is how I imagine St. Thomas Aquinas more platonically...in that I hope to have expressed the gentleness, shyness, and kind innocence of his soul through his appearance. I hope that makes sense.