page_title: Jacobello del Fiore
section_title: Doge's Palace commission
hierarchical_section_title: Jacobello del Fiore / Early life and works / Doge's Palace commission
context_page_description: Jacobello del Fiore was a Venetian artist in the late fourteenth century and early fifteenth century. His early work is in the Late Gothic style popularized by Altichiero da Verona and Jacopo Avanzi, two of his contemporaries, while his mature work displays a local Venetian style established by the school of Paolo Veneziano, an artist and workshop proprietor with notable Byzantine inspiration in his work. This stylistic return to his roots sets him apart from Niccolò di Pietro and Zanino di Pietro, Venetian contemporaries he is often associated with. During his lifetime, he received commissions primarily on the Adriatic coast and in Venice.
context_section_description: As proof of his prominence, in 1412 the Venetian signory employed Jacobello with an annual salary of one hundred ducats, a stipend that was later reduced to 50 ducats because of Venice's war with Dalmatia.
  Between 1409 and 1415, Jacobello is believed to have been commissioned to decorate the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Hall of the Great Council) in the Doge's Palace, putting him in direct contact with advanced mainland painters such as Gentile da Fabriano, Pisanello, and Michelino da Besozzo. The influence of Fabriano and Michelino can be seen in Jacobello's previously mentioned 1409 Polyptych of the Blessed Michelina and in the later Virgin of Mercy between Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in the Accademia of Venice, likely painted in the mid 1410s. Michelino's influence can be seen in the heavy-limbed infant and areas of raised pastiglia decoration in the Virgin of Mercy and additionally in the 1415 Lion of St Mark (in situ), specifically in the animal's abstract tail and decorative wings.
  Fabriano's influence can be seen in Jacobello's use of luxurious drapery and decorative sophistication; however, instead of adopting Fabriano's empirical attention to detail of nature and surface structure, Jacobello, as noted by Benati, upheld a stylized, abstract use of line and devotion to metallic appearances, giving his work a heraldic appearance. This conscious decision, as Benati further argues, marks a shift in Jacobello's style that loyally turns back to his early influences of the local Trecento tradition of Lorenzo Veneziano.
caption: Jacobello del Fiore: The Lion of St. Mark (In situ), 1415 (detail)
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