Venetian painter, who broke away from the Byzantine tradition exemplified by Paolo Veneziano which dominated Venetian art until the end of the 14th century. He was in turn influenced by the Intenational Gothic style of the early 15th century. Most of his works are in Venice.
On a huge multilevel Gothic double throne, Mary sits on Jesus’ right, while he places a crown on her head with his right hand. The multitude of figures restrained by the strict frames of architecture emphasize the rigid ceremoniousness of the scene. On the right, patriarchs and apostles, on the left prophets and martyrs, below saints and holy virgins are lined up; they can be recognized by the scrolls in their hands. The most direct participants in the event are the evangelists within the cells of the throne structure and the musical angels in the front. The choir of angels form the mainstay of the heavenly court. There are nine of them in the first row. The two on the ends hold incense-burners, the other have musical instruments. While the others standing behind them cannot be classified into the nine orders of angelic hierarchy, it is certain that those standing on either side of Mary and Jesus are cherubs and seraphs.
The seven musical angels are the personification of an exuberant panegyric as they reflect the ceremonial mood of Mary’s reception into heaven. Their instruments - two nearly identical psalteries, a viola, a portative organ, a harp, a tambourine and a lute - are mere attributes; they do not constitute a real orchestra. Characteristically, the painter did not use a single wind instrument.
The thin row of flowers at the bottom of the painting indicates that the location is the Garden of Eden. The donor of the work, Antonio Correr, the bishop of Ceneda, kneels in the right foreground. He commissioned this work for the high altar of the church from the aging master in whose works we can detect the Byzantine traits of Venetian Gothic. When he worked on this painting, he was probably inspired by Guariento’s fresco on the same subject, completed in 1365 for the great council hall (Sala del Maggior Consiglio) of the Palazzo Ducale.
Christ, larger in scale than the others around him, looms alone in the centre of the composition. Surrounding him are about figures whose actions occurred sequentially over time, here appearing simultaneously. Mary Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross. Standing to her left is St John the Evangelist.
This panel was certainly part of an unidentified larger altarpiece.
In his early work, Jacobello del Fiore was clearly working within the modes of Venetian painting of the late fourteenth century. But as soon as he came into contact with Gentile da Fabriano whom the Republic of Venice had summoned in 1414-1415 to decorate the Great Council Chamber of the Palace of the Doges with his International Gothic ‘fables’, he tended to shake free of all the abstract precepts of Byzantine art and develop a narrative fluency and a stylisation of shapes and forms which reflected the spirit of ‘courtly’ Gothic style. He adopted this style when dealing with official themes too, as in the ‘Triptych of Justice’ painted in 1421 for the offices of the Magistrato del Proprio at the Palace of the Doges.
In the central part of the triptych a rich Gothic frame encloses an enthroned Justice holding a sword and flanked by Venetian lions.
Jacobello, known for images of Madonnas, such as this Madonna of Humility, has imbued the composition with a sense of softness and tenderness rarely seen in Byzantine iconography. The formal eastern iconography of this subject, depicting the Madonna facing the viewer, holding a stiffly posed and fully clothed child, has been slightly modified by Jacobello. Here, the Madonna, seated on a grassy patch, is slightly turned towards the child with her head inclined to the right. The child, while still fully clothed, reaches out to his mother in a somewhat playful gesture.
The Triptych was painted between 1415 and 1436 with the earlier of the two dates the more probable given the affinity of this work with the style of the ‘Stories of Santa Lucia’ in the Pinacoteca at Fermo. If the appearance of the lateral saints - St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist - is still somewhat forbidding, and if they seem still to be firmly part of the world of the 1300s, the centre is occupied by the Virgin presented as an extremely elegant, divine idol, surrounded by crowds of devotees, the costume and physical attitude of each of which is rendered through an extremely subtle use of light and colour.
Despite its poor state of preservation, this panel is one of the most important works by the artist. In the lower centre is a scroll with the inscription: IN GREMIO MATRIS SEDE SAPIENCI / AE PATRIS JACOBELUS DE FIOR PIXIT.
