tant master as he was, occupies a place by himself.
A pupil of the Vivarini and perhaps, as we have noted, of Antonio
Negroponte, Crivelli was profoundly influenced by the Paduans, from whom
he learned that metallic, finished quality of paint which he carried to
perfection. Crivelli shows intellect, individuality, even genius, in the
way in which he grapples with his medium and produces his own reading,
and the circumstances of his life were such as to throw him in upon
himself and to preserve his originality. His little early "Madonna and
Child" at Verona is linked with that of Negroponte by the elaborate
festoons, strings of beads, and large-patterned brocades used in the
surroundings, and has those ugly, foreshortened little _putti_, holding
the instruments of the Passion, of the type elaborated by Squarcione and
Marco Zoppo, and which, in their improved state, we are accustomed to
think of as Mantegnesque.

When Crivelli was thirty-eight years old, he was condemned to six
months' imprisonment and to a fine of two hundred lire for an outrage
on a neighbour's wife. Perhaps it was to escape from an unenviable
reputation that he left Venice soon after and set up painting in the
Marches, where he lived from 1468 to 1473. He then went on to Camerino
in Umbria, where his great triptych, now in the Brera, was painted,
and a few years later he was in Ascoli, with a commission for an
Annunciation in the Cathedral. This is the picture now in the National
Gallery, in which the Bishop holds a model of the Duomo. After 1490 he
worked in little towns in the Marches, and is not mentioned after 1493.
He does not seem ever to have come back to Venice.

Shut up in the Marches, where there was little strong local talent, and
where he could not keep up with the progress that was taking place in
Venice, he was obliged himself to supply the artistic movement. He kept
the Squarcionesque traditions to the end, but moulded them by his own
love of rich and exuberant decoration. Moreover, he was of a very
intense religious bias, and this finds a deeply touching and mystical
expression, more especially in his Pietas. The love of gilded patterns
and fanciful detail was deep-seated in all the Umbrian country. His
altarpieces were intended as sumptuous additions to rich churches, and
were consequently arranged, with many divisions, in the old Muranese
manner. His great ancona, in the National Gallery, is a marvel of
elaborate ornament and enamel-