Roseto, Jacopo da Bologna detto R

ROSETO, JACOPO da BOLOGNA detto R. - Goldsmith, active in Bologna in the last decades of the 14th century, of whom particular biographical data are lacking.

In 1380 he signed the reliquary of the head of St. Petronius, commissioned by the Bolognese commune (today it is found in the sacristy of S. Stefano), and in 1383 that of the head of St. Dominic, displayed in the church of the same name in Bologna. These are the masterpiece of Emilian Gothic goldsmithing. The reliquary, formed on the model of a polygonal tempietto opened by bifora windows, supported by a shaft set upon a tall base, served R. as a means to display an extreme technical skill in enamels (whose compositions with figures recall the painting of the local 14th-century masters), cast statuettes, ornamental motifs engraved, embossed, pierced in gilded silver, also embellished with corals. Praiseworthy are the sure technique and the singular fineness of execution, less so the overabundance of very minute details that are at the expense of a clear geometric line. Technical analogies, employed however with a more elegantly Gothic and less trite style, lead one to assign to his school a certain Jacopo di Michele, author of the valuable reliquary of the finger of St. Thomas Aquinas in S. Domenico in Bologna.

Venturino Alee