AVANZI, Jacopo

(b. ~1345 ?, d. ~1395 Bologna)

Italian painter. At least two painters of this name were recorded in Bologna: a Jacopo di Pietro Avanzi, who was dead by 1378, and one who was paid for a small commission on 13 April 1384. This has led to much confusion. The earliest reference is to a Iacobus Avancini depintor, resident in 1363 in the parish of S Cecilia in the Porta Piera quarter of Bologna. On 28 February 1375 a Jacopo Avanzi witnessed a notarial act and on 23 June 1377 a Jacopo Avanzi was one of several craftsmen paid for a bishop’s pallium.

In around 1374-76 he painted frescoes from the story of St James in the Chapel of St James (now Chapel of St Felix) in the Sant’Antonio in Padua. The frescoes with the Story of Moses in the church Sant’Apollonia di Mezzaratta in Bologna (now transferred to the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna) are also attributed to him.

Liberation of the Companions of St James

In Avanzi’s lunette fresco in the Cappella San Giacomo, the human figures many showing traits of physiognomy and drapery which remind us of Giotto, are dominated by a central mass of rocks. In the foreground a bridge has collapsed, and the persecutors following saint’s companions fall into a stream. The floundering horses and humans are represented with striking fidelity.

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View of the Cappella di San Giacomo

The frescoes in the Cappella di San Giacomo (Chapel of St James) were commissioned by Bonifacio Lupi di Soragno and his wife, Caterina dei Franceschi. The architecture, designed by the Venetian sculptor and architect Andriolo de’ Santi was commissioned in 1372.

The painting school of Padua can be ranked as the most vigorous of the northern Italian schools: the painters of Padua built upon Giotto’s achievements. The prolific Paduan fresco painters added striking naturalistic observations of their own in landscape, in the painting of animals, and in portraiture. The most successful painters of the period came to Padua from outside - Jacopo Avanzi from Bologna and Altichiero da Zevio from Verona. In the Chapel of St James, to Avanzi have been attributed most of the lunettes of the Life of St James, painted about 1374, while to Altichiero has been assigned the huge Crucifixion and some of the other lunettes.

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