y number of studio
models or burgesses aspiring at portraits, after the fashion of the
Brancacci and S. Maria Novella frescoes, where spectators of miracles
make a point never to look at the miraculous proceedings. But there
were men who felt differently: the men who loved splendour and detail.
To Gentile da Fabriano, that wonderful man in whom begins the colour and
romance of Venetian painting,[8] the adoration of the kings could not
possibly be what it had been for the Giottesques, or what it still was
for Angelico. The Madonna, St. Joseph, the child Christ did not cease to
be interesting: he painted them with evident regard, gave the Madonna a
beautiful gold hem to her dress, made St. Joseph quite unusually amiable,
and shed a splendid gilt glory about the child Christ. But to him the
wonderful part of the business was not the family in the shed at Bethlehem
which the kings came to see; but those kings themselves, who came from
such a long way off. He put himself at the point of view of a holy
family less persuaded of its holiness, who should suddenly see a bevy
of grand folks come up to their door: the miraculous was here. The
spiritual glory was of course on the side of the family of Joseph; but
the temporal glory, the glory that delighted Gentile, that went to
his brain and made him childishly happy, was with the kings and their
retinue. That retinue--the trumpeters prancing on white horses, with
gold lace covers, the pages, the armour-bearers, the treasurers, the
huntsmen with the hounds, the falconers with the hawks, winding for
miles down the hills, and expanding into the circle of strange and
delightful creatures that kings must have about their persons: jesters
with heads thrown back and eyes squeezed close, while thinking of some
funny jest; dwarfs and negroes, almost as amusing as their camels
and giraffes; tame lynxes chained behind the saddle, monkeys perched,
jabbering, on the horses' manes--all this was much more wonderful in
Gentile da Fabriano's opinion than all the wonders of the Church, which
grew somehow less wonderful the more implicitly you believed in them.
Then, in the midst of all these delightful splendours, the kings
themselves! The old grey-beard in the brown pomegranate embossed brocade
going on all fours, and kissing the little child's feet; the dark young
man, with peaked beard and wistful face, removing his coroneted turban;
and last, but far from least, the youngest king, the beardless b