GENTILE DA FABRIANO: THE ARTIST BEHIND THE BELLINI WORKSHOP

When Jacopo Bellini joined Gentile da Fabriano’s workshop, he wasn’t just learning to grind pigment and paint a hand. Gentile was one of the most successful artists in Italy, and for the next decade or more Jacopo followed him from city to city: Venice, Brescia, probably Fabriano, then Florence, and perhaps beyond. Gentile worked for Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Brescia, for Palla Strozzi, one of the richest men in Florence, and in the end for the pope. Jacopo was learning to paint. He was also watching a man run an art business.

JACOPO BELLINI ARRIVES IN FLORENCE: THE FUTURE IS ALREADY THERE

Back in 1419, when Gentile da Fabriano left Brescia with his young Venetian assistant, Jacopo Bellini, in tow, he wasn’t really headed to Florence. He was headed to the pope. Martin V, newly elected and not yet able to return to Rome, was living at Santa Maria Novella, and Gentile had promised to join him once he finished the chapel he was painting for Pandolfo Malatesta in Brescia. He made his way south by way of Fabriano, and by 1420 he had rented a house and workshop in Florence near Santa Trinita. The pope soon moved on to Rome. Gentile stayed, because Palla Strozzi made him an offer.

JACOPO BELLINI: FIGHT OR FLIGHT? HOW ABOUT BOTH

In June 1423, Jacopo Bellini was living in Gentile da Fabriano’s house in Florence, working on the most important commission of his master’s career. Then he got into a fight.

Paintings from the workshop had been set out to dry in the courtyard, and a group of boys started throwing stones at them. Jacopo went out to stop them. He singled out one, Bernardo, who was big enough that Jacopo took him for nearly grown. Words passed, Bernardo taunted him, and they came to blows. Bernardo later told the court that Jacopo had hit him on the arm with a wooden bat. It may well have been a fistfight that acquired a weapon somewhere between the courtyard and the courtroom. The real problem was Bernardo’s father, Silvestro, a Florentine notary with friends in the city’s courts.