Page 8 - Jacobello del Fiore - His Oeuvre and a Sumptuous Crucifixion
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JACOBELLO DEL FIORE
A CRUCIFIXION AND A RECONSTRUCTION OF HIS EARLY CAREER
The sizeable panel painting discussed people - ( Fig. 2). Numerous figures are
here1 depicts a crowded Crucifixion crowded into the space around these
scene set against a city wall with a protagonists, only some of whom are
gate at each end, which symbolises recognisable for the part they play in the
Jerusalem. The painter has taken care to drama: Longinus, mounted on a horse at
include a rocky summit between the city and left, who has thrust his lance into Christ’s
the figures in the foreground, thus alluding ribs, causing a flow of blood and water, and
to Golgotha – the hill just outside Jerusalem who now joins his hands in a last-minute
on which capital punishment was carried recognition of his divinity; Stephaton
out. The scene is centred on the cross that (named thus in the Apocryphal Gospels), the
bears the crucified Christ, with Mary servant who lifts a reed with a vinegar-
Magdalene grasping its base as she soaked sponge to quench the thirst of the
contemplates him in desperation; her red moribund victim; and the centurion,
cloak has fallen from her shoulders, mounted at right, who gives orders to break
revealing her long blond hair and blue-violet Christ’s legs in order to verify his death
robe, belted at the waist - ( see cover detail ). ( Fig. 3). The painting thus unites successive
moments into one scene.
The solitary cross of Christ’s - not
flanked here by the crucified thieves - While simultaneous narrative is
divides the scene exactly in two, with traditional in any mediaeval depiction of the
Christ’s followers forming the group on the Crucifixion, what is less conventional about
left – Saint John the Evangelist, and the the panel is the unusually festive palette
Madonna supported by the pious women chosen by the painter.We have already noted
( see Fig. 1) – while the right side includes the contrast between the crimson red of the
the equally canonical group of soldiers (in cloak and the violet of the Magdalene’s robe,
this case no more than two), who cast dice which closely resemble those of Saint John
for Christ’s robe before the leaders of the the Evangelist, whose cloak has a slightly
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