Page 25 - Jacobello del Fiore - His Oeuvre and a Sumptuous Crucifixion

clearly Trecentesque and marked by a
constant desire to emphasize angularity, as
seen in the sinuous flow of highlights along
the edges of drapery folds. The use of thin
layers of shell gold, for example in the floral
motifs on the Virgin’s robe or in the cross
held by Saint Francis, also recalls the touches
of precious decoration in the Matthiesen
Crucifixion; and the sophisticated, elegant
form of the Madonna is forward-looking, as is
Saint James’ drapery, fanning out onto the
ground in a capriciously decorative manner.43
Finally, a handful of paintings of the Virgin
and Child, listed by both De Marchi and
Lucco, are closely related to this group of
works. These are of uneven quality, in some
cases implying workshop assistance, and
form a very homogeneous group that is open
to further additions.44 Far from becoming
weaker, this group stands on firmer ground
if we resolve the identity of its author as
Jacobello rather than his father Francesco del
Fiore; and it represents his early phase, as
Coletti had partly intuited.
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JACOBELLO’SYOUTHFUL CAREER
Jacobello’s early activity is punctuated by a
certain number of documents that show
his gradual professional evolution. In 1394,
when he married for the first time, he was
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not yet emancipated from the tutelage of his
father Francesco,45 which enables us to
establish his date of birth to 1375 at the latest
– that is, considerably earlier than the circa
1480 often indicated in the literature.46 In
1400, well into his legal maturity, he appears
as a witness in a contract drawn up in Venice,
and after this point his full emancipation is
demonstrated by the fact that in 1401 – as
stated by the abate Luigi Lanzi, who saw the
work still in situ 47 – Jacobello sent a painting
(now untraced) to the church of San Cassiano
in Pesaro, a city that seems to have had a
special importance during his early career.
Jacobello’s first securely identifiable surviving
work is a triptych dated to 1407 of the Virgin
of Mercy with Saints James and Anthony Abbot,
formerly in the church of Santa Maria in
Montegranaro (province of Ascoli Piceno, in
the Marches), and recently donated to the
church Santa Maria delle Grazie in Pesaro
after a lengthy period spent in a Swiss private
collection.48 The Crucifix of 1408 for the
parish church in Casteldimezzo (Pesaro),
executed in collaboration with the wood
carver Antonio di Bonvesin,49 and the tavola
painted in 1409 for Pesaro, once again seen by
Lanzi and hypothetically identified by
Christiansen with the Polyptych of the Blessed
Michelina (Museo Civico, Pesaro),50 reveal the
professional prestige attained by the young
painter before his father’s death in
1409/1411. By 1412 Jacobello was employed