Page 32 - Jacobello del Fiore - His Oeuvre and a Sumptuous Crucifixion
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Fig. 23 - JACOBELLO DEL FIORE: The Polyptych of the Blessed Michelina, Fig. 24 - JACOBELLO DEL FIORE: The Madonna of the
Pesaro, Pinacoteca Comunale Misericord between St. John the Baptist and St. John the
Aless perceptible element in the Monte- Evangelist, Venice, Accademia
granaro altarpiece – perhaps
excepting the figures’ vertical swagger – is – that separates Jacobello from the new
the influence of Gentile da Fabriano, idiom of the painter from Fabriano, whose
documented in Venice in 1408 but who had success inVenice had been immediate.While
probably been there for several years. The our painter was drawn to the latter’s
mark made by the Marchigian painter, ornament and sophistication, with its
whose arrival in Venice followed an luxuriant festoons of drapery, he flatly
extraordinarily prominent career in declined – in line with the qualities that
Lombardy, is more clearly traceable in the grew from his early style – the fascination
Polyptych of the Blessed Michelina, executed with nature and surface structure that we
for Pesaro perhaps in 1409 - ( Fig. 23),68 and consider the most modern elements of
becomes dominant in the triptych with the Gentile’s language. Jacobello’s art thus
Virgin of Mercy between Saints John the Baptist evolved into a stylized, abstract elegance of
and John the Evangelist in the Accademia, line that lends a heraldic quality to his
Venice, probably painted in the mid-1410s - images, as if he wished to deny the new
( Fig. 24).69 Both these paintings display the language of his colleague, preferring rather
difference in character – more than in style to aim for a polemic return to the local
Trecento tradition of LorenzoVeneziano and
his followers, which he had refused in his
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