prevented
the Giottesques from doing very much in the decorative line except
in conjunction with the art--perhaps quite separate from that of the
painter, and exercised by a different individual--of the embosser and
gilder.

It is with the fifteenth century that begins, in Italy as in Flanders (we
must think of the carved stonework, the Persian carpets, the damascened
armour, the brocade dresses of Van Eyck's and Memling's Holy Families),
the deliberate habit of putting into pictures as much as possible of the
beautiful and luxurious things of this world. The house of the Virgin,
originally a very humble affair, or rather, in the authority of the
early Giottesques, a _no place, nowhere_, develops gradually into a
very delightful residence in the choicest part of the town, or into a
pleasantly situated villa, like the one described in the Decameron,
commanding a fine view. The Virgin's bedchamber, where we are shown it,
as, for instance, in Crivelli's picture in the National Gallery, is
quite as well appointed in the way of beautiful bedding, carving, and
so forth, as the chamber of the lady of John Arnolfini of Lucca in Van
Eyck's portrait. Outside it, as we learn from Angelico, Cosimo Rosselli,
Lippi, Ghirlandaio, indeed, from almost every Florentine painter,
stretches a pleasant portico, decorated in the Ionic or Corinthian
style, as if by Brunellesco or Sangallo, with tesselated floor, or
oriental carpet, and usually a carved or gilded desk and praying
stool; while the privacy of the whole place is guarded by a high wall,
surmounted by vases, overtopped by cypresses, and in whose shelter
grows a row of well-kept roses and lilies. Sometimes this house, as I
have said, becomes a villa, as is the case, not unfrequently, with the
Lombards, who love to make the angel appear on the flowery grass against
a background of Alpine peaks, such as you see them, rising blue and
fairylike from the green ricefields about Pavia. Crivelli, however,
though a Lombard, prefers a genteel residence in town, the magnificent
Milan of Galeazzo and Filippo Visconti. He gives us a whole street,
where richly dressed and well peruked gentlemen look down from
the terraces, duly set with flower-pots, of houses ornamented with
terra-cotta figures and medallions like those of the hospital at Milan.
In this street the angel of the Annunciation is kneeling, gorgeously
got up in silks and brocades, and accompanied by a nice little bishop
carrying a mi