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.