Beschreibung:

Circle of Jacopo di Paolo (c.1345-1430) The Crucifixion, miniature on a leaf from an illuminated Missal on vellum [Bologna, c.1400] A dramatic and expressive rendering of the Crucifixion, painted by a Bolognese follower of Jacopo di Paolo. 350 x 250mm. Full-page Canon miniature with the Crucifixion within a full border, the reverse ruled blank (marginal creasing and rubbing, loss of pigment especially to the borders and the blue background). Provenance: the female religious kneeling beside the Cross indicates that the parent manuscript was made for a local Convent. The fleshy, pronouncedly modelled figures are typical of Emilian illumination of the period, and although anonymous, our artist is particularly close to Jacopo di Paolo, miniaturist and panel painter, nephew of the great Bolognese illuminator Niccolò di Giacomo. We see his influence in the angular drapery and the tall figures with furrowed brows and high domed foreheads, and in the palette of pinks, reds, blues and greens. A very similar Crucifixion is in the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Vanderbilt University (1979.0653P), where an identical Mary Magdalene, also clothed in red and green, beckons animatedly to a smaller kneeling female Saint (in the present composition replaced by a kneeling nun). Jacopo was enrolled in both the painters’ and goldsmiths’ guilds and held many public offices in Bologna: he illuminated two statutes of the Arte della seta (Bologna, Archivio di Stato, Cod. min. 56, before 1413; Cod. min. 59, 1424), and in 1393 he designed sculpture for the façade of St Petronio (founded 1390). Jacopo’s influence in Bologna lasted for half a century, with his sons Orazio (fl.1410) and Paolo (fl.1410–18) and son-in-law Michele di Matteo da Bologna perpetuating his legacy.