, over-worked frescoes round the church. All
these paintings are too small to be the least effective at the height
at which they are placed, and can only be seen with a good glass.
Pisanello's art is not well adapted to wide, frescoed walls, and he
seems to have enjoyed painting miniature panels, such as the two we
possess. In these he is full of originality, and shows his love for the
knightly life, the life of courts, in the armed _cap-a-pied_ figure of
St. George, whose point-device armour is crowned by a wide Tuscan hat
and feather. The artist's knowledge and love of animals and wild nature
comes out in them, and his interest in beauty and chivalry as opposed to
the outworn conventionalities of ecclesiastic demands.

We shall be able to trace the influence of both the Umbrian and the
Veronese painter on men like Antonio di Murano and Jacopo Bellini, and
it is important to note the likeness of the two to one another. In
Gentile's "Adoration" we have on the one hand the Holy Family and the
gay pageant of the kings, of which we could find the prototype in many
an Umbrian panel. On the other we see those contrasting elements which
were struggling in Pisanello; the delight in flowers and animals, in
gaily apparelled figures, in dogs and horses. The two have no lasting
effect, but though they created no actual school, they gave a stimulus
to Venetian art, and started it on a new tack, enabling it to open its
channels to fresh ideas. During the time they were in Venice, Jacobello
del Fiore shows some signs of adapting the new fashion to his early
style, and the horse of S. Grisogono is very like that of Gentile in the
"Adoration," or like Pisano's horses. Michele Giambono is actually found
in collaboration, in the chapel of the Madonna da Mascoli in St. Mark's,
with such a virile painter as the Florentine, Andrea del Castagno, who
is evidently responsible for God the Father and two of the Apostles; but
Castagno must have been thoroughly antipathetic to the Venetians, and
though he may have taught them the way to draw, he has not left any
traces of a following.

Facio, writing in 1455, speaks of Gentile's work in the Ducal Palace as
already decaying, while Pisanello's was painted out by Alvise Vivarini
and Bellini.

PRINCIPAL WORKS

_Gentile da Fabriano._

Florence. Academy: Adoration of the Magi.
Milan. Brera: Altarpiece.

_Altichiero._

Padua. Capella S. Felice, S. Antonio: Frescoes.
Capella