Page 27 - Jacobello del Fiore - His Oeuvre and a Sumptuous Crucifixion

instead to the choicest part of Jacobello’s
catalogue, confirmed (as Berenson knew) 56
by the fact that it was originally part of a
single painting with the Assassination of Saint
Peter Martyr now in Dumbarton Oaks, in
which the formal solutions used by Jacobello
in his Stories of Saint Lucy in Fermo 57 – one of
the great works of the Italian gotico fiorito –
are far too similar to suggest any other artist.
If we compare it with the first polyptych
painted for Pesaro, the Virgin of Humility in
Lecce becomes the missing link between the
paintings so far assigned to the Master of the
Giovanelli Madonna and the secure works of
the young Jacobello. Its dating to 1401 would
create a defining moment that separates
pictures of a more archaic style – such as the
triptych no.14 in theVenice Accademia and the
Matthiesen Crucifixion itself, which would
appear to have been painted during the last
decade of the Trecento – from other works
which show a greater fascination with line: for
example, the Giovanelli Madonna - (Fig.7) -
and the Crucifixion with Mourners and Saints in a
French private collection - (Fig.16) - could
have followed next, between 1401 and 1407,
the date of the Montegranaro polyptych.
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The Matthiesen Crucifixion holds the
earliest place in this sequence, and what
amazes one about this superb picture is its
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artistic parentage: it is clearly inspired by a
painting that was little more than a decade
old when Jacobello was beginning to emerge
from his father Francesco’s workshop. This is
the fresco of the same subject by theVeronese
painter Altichiero, commissioned by
Raimondino Lupi and completed by 1384 in
the oratory of Saint George adjacent to the
Basilica del Santo in Padua – of which the
Matthiesen panel, albeit speaking an absolutely
personal and recognizable language, is an
intelligent paraphrase (Fig.6).58 The panel
Crucifixion not only takes up the general
composition of the fresco – for example, in
the manner of arranging the figures on
several levels layered according to depth, so
as to lend the whole a vertical development –
but also makes literal citations from it: the
figure of Longinus on a horse, his lance
abandoned between his folded arms, appears
identical, as does the centurion with a
plumed helmet giving orders to his men on
the other side of the painting. These are such
clear echoes that we can only imagine that
Jacobello knew the Paduan fresco very well
and owned specific drawings made from it.
As can be seen with other contemporary
Venetian painters, it was precisely this
conscious awareness of the very latest
developments in the Padua-Verona-Bologna
triangle that offered a direction beyond the
tradition of Lorenzo Veneziano, whose style
constricted Venetian painting like a gilded