Virgin and Child

Jacobello del Fiore's Virgin and Child, painted around 1410 and held in the Museo Correr in Venice, is an early work by one of the leading Venetian painters of the early fifteenth century. Jacobello was the dominant figure in Venetian painting in the generation before Gentile da Fabriano's arrival in Venice in 1408 transformed the local tradition. His Virgin and Child paintings belong to the long tradition of Byzantine-influenced Venetian devotional images, but he was updating them with the softer modeling and more human expressiveness that characterized the International Gothic style then sweeping across Europe. The Museo Correr panel shows the transition from Venetian Byzantine tradition toward the International Gothic ideal.

Jacobello employs a gold ground with warm flesh tones modeled in a manner that still reflects Byzantine icon conventions but with added softness and naturalism. The Child's pose and the Virgin's tender expression show the Venetian assimilation of International Gothic figure style. Drapery folds are decorative yet more naturalistic than Byzantine prototypes.