ALBEREGNO, Jacobello

From the demolished church of San Giovanni Evangelista on Torcello, the polyptych portrays with exemplary clarity one of the visions described by St John in the Book of Revelations.

The picture shows the central panel of the Polyptych of the Apocalypse. In the centre of the polyptych is God the Father in Glory with the Lamb, between the symbols of the four Evangelists.

The ineffably expressive naturalness which makes the central panel of Alberegno’s signed triptych so admirable appears again in the panels of the Polyptych with five episodes from the Apocalypse, originally placed in the church of St. John the Evangelist at Torcello. In the central panel for example, where St. John the Evangelist looks up from his writing to admire the Eternal in glory with the Lamb of God, surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists with wings covered with eyes, being worshipped by twenty-four venerable old men, here too the theme, though very complex, comes through with exemplary clarity because of the subtle expressiveness of the details which frees the sacred vision of every transcendent abstraction.

Even more in the four minor panels of the Polyptych of the Apocalypse the transcendental significance of the gold background pales before the freshness and inventiveness of Jacobello Alberegno’s imagination. As with the other scenes, so with the ‘Harvest of the World’, the text of the Book of the Apocalypse (XIII, vv. 17-18) is closely followed: ‘And another angel came out of the temple… and he too had a sharpened sickle. And another angel came out from the altar… saying: wield your sharpened sickle and harvest the grapes of the world, for the fruit is now ripe’. The detailed and penetrating transcription of the sacred text into pictorial form seems to be softened by the enchanting addition of an arbour of black grapes with bunches of the fruit hanging heavy with juice and leaves which are already showing signs that Autumn is drawing to a close.

Much more of an innovator than either Catarino or Lorenzo Veneziano was Jacobello Alberegno, who in the Triptych with Crucifixion and Saints, his only signed work, reveals himself to be an artist of penetrating refinement. If it is true that the two lateral saints, St Gregory and St Jerome, are examples of stylized Gothic figures, the images of the small central panel display a naturalness worthy of one of the best of Giotto’s disciples. An extraordinary human dimension seems to govern the expression of sentiments in the picture: a grief-stricken St John the Evangelist clutches his cloak to his breast while the Virgin extends imploring arms and stares transfixed with anguish at her crucified son.