Page 24 - Jacobello del Fiore - His Oeuvre and a Sumptuous Crucifixion

with Mourners and Saints in a French private Fig. 16 - JACOBELLO DEL FIORE: The Crucifixion,
collection - ( Fig. 16),41 a work of great The Annunciation and Saints, France, Private Collection
sophistication for its complex figural
composition, in which De Marchi rightly A more severe concept of style is present in
noted that as well as a ‘monumentality derived triptych no.14 of the Accademia Gallery in
from an early sympathy for Altichiero and Venice, with the Virgin of Humility and Pietà
Jacopo Avanzi’, it also exhibited ‘more flanked in the wings by Saint James and Saint
accentuated Gothic rhythms than the compact Francis,42 which Longhi had related to the
Crucifixion now with Matthiesen’; he also Giovanelli Madonna - ( Fig. 7). Here the
underlined the peculiarity of colour, defined figures, painted respectively against gold and
by ‘subtle nuances, filled with light’, which is, red backgrounds in the central and side
in fact, what one sees in the Matthiesen panels, display a harsh, direct approach, still
Crucifixion, albeit within a more archaic figure
style [‘misura monumentale [che] deriva al
maestro dalle simpatie giovanili per Altichiero
e Jacopo Avanzi’ (...) ‘flessioni gotiche più
accentuate che non nella serrata Crocifissione
ora Matthiesen’ (...) ‘sfumature dolcissime e
cariche di luce’]. After noting the marked
resemblance between the figure of Christ and
those in the Crucifixions by the young Jacobello
del Fiore on the pinnacles of the Stockholm
Triptych and the panel in the Pushkin Museum
in Moscow, De Marchi then concluded that
‘the more Gothic pliability of this work allows
us to imagine its author evolving well beyond
the rather hard, stern stylistic language of his
Trecento paintings’ [‘la cedevolezza più gotica
di questo dipinto ci permette di immaginare
un’evoluzione del maestro ben oltre le
siglature un po’ dure ed arcigne delle opere
trecentesche’].

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