Meliore di Jacopo, from the parish of San Jacopo in Florence, is one of
the few 13th century painters who can be found mentioned in
contemporary documents, apart from also having left some signed works.
We find him first mentioned as "Megliore dipintore" (Meliore the
painter), on the list of Florentines who took part in the battle of
Montaperti in 1260, showing that he had already started his career as
an artist by this date. Some of his paintings dating from this early
period, roughly between 1250 and 1260, include: the reredos (rear of
the altar) with the Mother and Child enthroned between Saints Peter
and Paul in the Parish Church of San Leolino at Panzano, the Madonna
Stoclet (Adolphe Stoclet collection) and the Mother and Child in
Chicago (Art Institute). All these works show clear influences of the
somewhat geometrical style of the Master of the Bigallo, whose workshop
very probably gave him his early training.
We have a description of a polyptych, since lost or still unidentified,
that was signed and dated by the painter (1270), but Meliore's
catalogue has been reconstructed around another important work, also
signed and dated (1271). It is the altarpiece now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence showing
Christ in benediction between St. Peter, the Virgin Mary, St. John the
Evangelist and St. Paul. Here Meliore's figurative language already
appears to have reached an individual style of its own, which can be
recognised in the way he treats the physiognomic characteristics, a
style that he was never to abandon, and in the refined predominance of
graphic elements in the draperies, together with his use of
highlighting that tends to flatten the composition and thus limit his
research to the level of artificial decoration.
His later Mother and
Child in Santo Stefano at Montefioralle instead contains a clear
maturity of expression. Dating from around the eighth decade of the
century it shows an awareness of the latest changes in the contemporary
Florentine painting, which was already attempting to create improved
tonal expressions and more precise indications of the space. Some of
the many controversial attributions include the Mother and Child in
the Museum of Religious Art at Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, which some
critics tend to remove from the corpus of the painter as,
stylistically, it is far removed from his previous works. Others
instead believe that, at this stage, Meliore was beginning to approach
the style of Coppo di Marcovaldo, who he would certainly have met in
Siena after the battle of Montaperti and with whom he occasionally
collaborated when in Florence. He may even have been already working
with him on the realisation of the Madonna in Santa Maria Maggiore, and
they certainly worked together on the mosaic decorations illustrating
the Last Judgement in the cupola of the Baptistery, carried out between
1260 and 1275 ca. Meliore in fact carried out some episodes of
Paradise, and the angels and apostles in the upper order.
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