in the left transept of San Trovaso. Jacobello's will,
executed in 1439 in favour of his wife Lucia and his son, Ercole, with
provision for a possible posthumous son, shows him to have been a man of
considerable possessions. He owned a slave and had other servants, a
house, money, and books. Among his fellow-workers who are represented in
Venice are Niccolo Semitocolo, Niccolo di Pietro, and Lorenzo Veneziano.
The important altarpiece by the last, in the Academy, has evidently been
reconstructed; two Eternal Fathers hover over the Annunciation, and the
Saints have been restored to the framework in such wise that the backs
of many of them are turned on the momentous central event. In the
"Marriage of St. Catherine," in the same gallery, Lorenzo gets more
natural. The Child, in a light green dress with gold buttons, has a
lively expression, and looks round at His Mother as if playing a game.
The chapel of San Tarasio in San Zaccaria contains an ancona of which
the central panel was only inserted in 1839, and is identical with
Lorenzo's other work. One of the finest and most elaborate of all the
anconae is in San Giovanni in Bragora, and is also the work of Lorenzo.
In this, as well as in that of San Tarasio, the Mother offers the Child
the apple, signifying the fruit of the Tree of Jesse and symbolical of
the Incarnation. This incident, which is found thus early in art, was
evidently felt to raise the group of the Mother and Child from a
representation of a merely earthly relationship to a spiritual scene
of the deepest meaning and the highest dignity.

Niccolo di Pietro has several early works of the last decade of the
fourteenth century, from which we gather that he began as a Byzantine,
but that he imitated Guariento and was tentatively drawn to the
Giottesque movement, but not, we may remember, before Giotto had been
dead for some sixty years. Niccolo di Pietro has been confounded with
Niccolo Semitocolo, but it is now realised that they were two distinct
masters. The most important work of Michele Giambono which has come
down to us is the signed ancona with five saints, now in the Venetian
Academy. It is unusual to find a saint in the central panel instead of
the Madonna. The saint is on a larger scale than his companions, and has
hitherto passed as the Redeemer, but Professor Venturi has identified
him as St. James the Great. He has the gold scallop-shell and pilgrim's
staff. It is clear from his size and position th