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JACOMETTO VENEZIANO - b. ~1450 ?, d. ~1497 Venezia - WGA

JACOMETTO VENEZIANO

(b. ~1450 ?, d. ~1497 Venezia)

Italian painter and illuminator. Knowledge of the artistic activity of Jacometto is based almost exclusively on the notebooks of Marcantonio Michiel, who recorded a number of his works in the patrician houses of Venice and Padua in the first half of the 16th century. In Pietro Bembo’s house Michiel saw a small picture with scenes from the life of a saint, and portraits of Bembo as a child of eleven and of his brother Carlo as a newborn baby in 1472; in the house of Francesco Zio Michiel saw four miniatures by Jacometto in a Book of Hours; in the house of Zuanantonio Venier he saw a small picture with animals painted in chiaroscuro; in the house of Antonio Pasqualino he saw a number of drawings; in the house of Gabriele Vendramin he saw a portrait painted (or drawn) in chiaroscuro, and a small book of vellum with pen drawings of animals and candelabra; and finally, in the house of Michele Contarini in 1543 the author saw ‘a little portrait of Messer Alvise Contarini …, who died some years ago; and on the same panel there is a portrait of a nun of San Secondo. On the cover of these portraits there is a small (?)deer in a landscape; and their leather case is decorated with foliage stamped with gold. This most perfect work is by the hand of Jacometto.’

It is clear from the testimony of Michiel that Jacometto practised chiefly as a manuscript illuminator and as a painter of small-scale panels, most of which were portraits. It is also clear that his work was much in demand among patrician collectors, and that, unlike most art of the generation before Giorgione, it was much admired by Michiel himself. The high reputation the artist enjoyed among his contemporaries is confirmed by the humanist Michele da Placiola, who in a letter of September 1497 praised the young Giulio Campagnola by saying that his miniatures ‘are not inferior to those of the late Jacometto, who was the best in the world’.

Alvise Contarini, Portrait of a Woman
Alvise Contarini, Portrait of a Woman by

Alvise Contarini, Portrait of a Woman

The two small panels, showing a pair of miniature portraits, are displayed as a diptych. Behind the man and woman a complementary but not continuos background landscape can be seen. Each panel has a painted reverse, That of the man has a depiction of a roebuck, symbol of faithful love. The reverse of the woman is painted to imitate gilt bronze, but it is impossible to read the image because of surface damage.

The original construction and function of these images, the identity of the sitters, and the meaning of the imagery is the subject of debate and further analysis. According to sixteenth-century documents, the portraits represent Alvise Contarini, member of a patrician family, and a nun of San Secondo. One of the possible explanations could be that the portraits represent a couple, with a posthumous image of the husband, and a depiction of the widow.

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Alvise Contarini, Portrait of a Woman (reverse)
Alvise Contarini, Portrait of a Woman (reverse) by

Alvise Contarini, Portrait of a Woman (reverse)

The two small panels, showing a pair of miniature portraits, are displayed as a diptych. Behind the man and woman a complementary but not continuos background landscape can be seen. Each panel has a painted reverse, That of the man has a depiction of a roebuck, symbol of faithful love. The reverse of the woman is painted to imitate gilt bronze, but it is impossible to read the image because of surface damage.

The original construction and function of these images, the identity of the sitters, and the meaning of the imagery is the subject of debate and further analysis. According to sixteenth-century documents, the portraits represent Alvise Contarini, member of a patrician family, and a nun of San Secondo. One of the possible explanations could be that the portraits represent a couple, with a posthumous image of the husband, and a depiction of the widow.

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Portrait of a Boy
Portrait of a Boy by

Portrait of a Boy

This painting was initially attributed to Antonello da Messina, then to Andrea Solario, Alvise Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini. Most of the pictures today widely accepted to be by Jacometto have undergone similar vicissitudes.

The mysterious Jacometto is an artist who is hard to classify, not least because of the extent and range of influences of other artists that are traceable in his oeuvre. Jacometto must have known the realistic and Netherlandish-influenced portraiture of Antonello da Messina, who traveled to Venice in 1475-76: the Portrait of a Boy evinces a very immediate reaction to Antonello. Jacometto was also stylistically indebted to Giovanni Bellini. But the type of picture Jacometto produced is very particular, since he is known also to have been a miniaturist. Almost all his surviving portraits are very small indeed, often much smaller than life-size.

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Portrait of a Young Man
Portrait of a Young Man by

Portrait of a Young Man

Jacometto Veneziano is one of the Venetian artists most deeply influenced by Antonello da Messina’s arrival in Venice in the mid-1470s. He was patronized by notable patricians and humanists. A small group of portraits, including the present painting, is now generally accepted as his work.

The present portrait shows a youth bust-length and in three-quarter view, his eyes gazing off to the left. He is clad in black and is set against a dark background. A distinctive feature is the arrangement of his hair. This helmet-like styled is called a ‘zazzera’, it can be seen in numerous Venetian portraits dated to the late 1480s and 1490s.

Until the first half of the twentieth century, this portrait was thought to be the work of one of three artists: Alvise Vivarini, Antonello da Messina, or Giovanni Bellini.

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