GIAMBONO, Michele

The scene of the Birth of the Virgin is on the left side of the barrel vault. This subject matter had been very rarely represented in Venetian art up until Giambono’s time, thus the artist turned to the most extensive and best-known Virgin cycle in Venetian territory, Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. In the background and to the left, the same patient servant waits outside the birthing chamber, which has been modernized with balconies, porches, and Gothic tracery that relate both to contemporary architecture and to the complex architecture of late-fourteenth-century Paduan frescoes.

After a probable initiation at the workshop of Jacobello del Fiore, followed by a phase of admiration of Gentile da Fabriano, Michele Giambono soon passed to a sweetened form of Gothicism with somewhat affected colourings rather along the lines of Pisanello’s work in the Palace of the Doges in Venice. The ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ which in fact has a clearly Gothic air about it, can probably be identified as the panel commissioned from Giambono in 1447 by Giovanni Dotto for the Church of S. Agnese. Attached to the order were the conditions that it should be delivered by the end of 1448 and that it should be similar to the one, painted not many years before by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d’Alemagna for the Venetian church of San Pantalon.

In 1431 Doge Foscari enlisted the assistance of two noble allies and procurators to create a new chapel in the left transept of St Mark’s, probably as an ex voto to the Virgin after a failed assassination attempt. Known as the Cappella Nova (New Chapel) until the seventeenth century, when it was taken over by the Confraternity of the Mascoli whose name it now bears, the barrel-vaulted chapel contains an elegant marble altarpiece showing the Madonna and Child flanked by two saints. An inscription above them records the names of the chapel’s founders and the foundation date. Mosaics surrounding an oculus in the lunette and on the barrel vault depict scenes from the life of the Virgin. Variegated marble covers the lower walls; The original traceried balustrade still survives at the chapel’s entrance.

Originally from the Scuola del Cristo at the Giudecca, the polyptych is composed of five panels, the central one of which is of St James the Greater with St John the Evangelist and St Filippo Benizzi (one of the saints of the Order of Servites) on the left, and St. Michael the Archangel and St. Louis of Toulouse on the right. The figures of the saints are set in a slow, semicircular rhythm against the tooled gold of the background and the actual paint seems to be translucent like porcelain. The extremely refined figures suggest obvious affinities with the world of Pisanello, particularly the figure of the Archangel Michael in his heavy armour decorated with gold, his pale face encircled with a crown of curls, his body poised almost as if to execute a dance-step over that of the dragon which lies like a heraldic image at the bottom of the panel.

Again in this late work Giambono’s confidence in his world of fabled lands and airy architecture, of gently flowing arabesques and elegantly shaded colourings will certainly not have been shaken by the presence in Venice since 1442 of an example of the new art emerging from Tuscany the frescoes of Andrea del Castagno in the chapel of St. Tarasius in the Church of San Zaccaria.

The polyptych is signed in the lower part of the central panel: MICHAEL / GIAMBONO PINXIT.

This painting is one of the rare examples of Venetian portraits from the first half of the fifteenth century. It depicts an unknown man whose costume and features identify him as not Italian. The subject could have been a member of the large community of Germans, Bohemians, Hungarians, Slavs, Dalmatians, and Albanians in Venice.

The work is the artist’s masterpiece and was painted when Giambono was Venice’s official painter and the master mosaicist of St Mark’s.The painting may have been the central panel of a triptych or of the altarpiece dedicated to the saint of the same name, a relic of whom is conserved in the church.

The arched architecture in this mosaic repeats identical forms in a drawing by Jacopo Bellini dated 1451.

This panel is in the elegant, International Gothic style.

The painting is probably the central part of a small polyptych. The two figures, especially the child, seem lively and less tied to traditional patterns although the artist has kept the late Gothic characteristics of his work.