Page 28 - Jacobello del Fiore - His Oeuvre and a Sumptuous Crucifixion
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cage. By the end of the 1360s Padua had da Bologna.59 In the years that followed – and
already seen the encounter between the not without paying attention to the
Bolognese painter Jacopo Avanzi and the achievements of prominent sculptors active in
Veronese Altichiero, both advocates of a neo- Venice such as the Dalle Masegne brothers –
Giottesque trend, partly anticipated by the the artist who perfected the renewal of
Florentine (but Lombard by adoption) Giusto Venetian painting was Nicolò di Pietro (or ‘del
de’ Menabuoi.Altichiero’s revival of the legacy Paradiso’, as he is evocatively named in
of Giotto, by now an indispensable model for documents that relate to the neighbourhood in
the finest Po Valley painters of the second half which he lived). His penchant for the neo-
of the fourteenth century, was coloured by the Giottesque style, rendered with even sharper
naturalism of the Lombard tradition; and it was and more expressive tones through his
his collaboration with Jacopo Avanzi – awareness of Bohemian painting, was voiced in
probably begun at an earlier stage but best a very personal idiom.
expressed in the reciprocal exchange of ideas
and suggestions in the Saint James Chapel in eee
the Santo – that convinced him of the validity
of three-dimensional depiction.The concept of Another artist active in Venice during
architectural space, combined with an these years, Zanino di Pietro (also
enduring search for arduous foreshortenings in known as Giovanni di Francia; his real name
his starkly expressive figures, is the most was Jean Charlier), had approached this
striking aspect of Avanzi’s frescoed lunettes in stylistic turn while working in Bologna, where
the Santo, where the painting seems to pierce he is documented between 1389 and 1406,
the two-dimensionality of the wall. The results and where he probably encountered Jacopo di
of this collaboration were extraordinarily Paolo. One reflection of the new milieu can
profitable for the evolution of pittura padana, be seen in the Crucifixion in his Rieti triptych,
and its echoes can be traced in Verona, where painted immediately after he returned to
Altichiero subsequently returned, and Venice,60 and which shows that even Zanino
Bologna, where Jacopo di Paolo, an intelligent was aware of the Matthiesen Crucifixion, from
pupil and follower of Avanzi, was active. which he appears to have quoted verbatim in
certain passages, notwithstanding his more
Venice itself was not immune to this Gothic-inflected vocabulary.
important development, as exemplified
relatively early on by one of Lorenzo We should now include Jacobello del Fiore
Veneziano’s most interesting pupils, Giovanni among the finest representatives of this trend,
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