Iacopino di Francesco dei Bavosi or dei Papazzoni, known as Iacopo da Bologna

IACOPINO di FRANCESCO dei BAVOSI or dei PAPAZZONI, called IACOPO da BOLOGNA. - Bolognese painter, recorded in documents from 1360 to 1383 and certainly already active before 1350. He was the greatest in art among the various Iacopi painters active in Bologna during the fourteenth century.

He formed his style on the examples of the Riminese masters and in particular of Francesco da Rimini, who was active around 1330, preserving an independence from the influence of the leading master of Bolognese painting of the fourteenth century: Vitale da Bologna. With the latter and with Simone de' Crocifissi he collaborated on the cycle of frescoes of the former oratory of S. Apollonia di Mezzaratta (Bologna). His figures, although marked by Giottoesque severity, reveal a character at times popular, as in the two polyptychs no. 161 and 159 of the Pinacoteca of Bologna and in the fragments of a third, dismembered, in the same Gallery. Besides the grandiose fresco recently discovered in the church of S. Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna depicting The Saint at the Battle of Ciavijo and the dramatic Crucifix of S. Giovanni in Monte in Bologna, the four Kress panels, formerly Gozzadini, of New York, the tragic Crucifixion of the Museum of Moulins and that of the Johnson Collection in Philadelphia are works of his.

Mario Massaccesi