40, is a Coronation of the Virgin, with many figures,
including several boys, and numerous saints seated. In the heads of the
saints we may trace the hand of Alamanus, in the Germanic type of
countenance which recalls the style of Stephen of Cologne. A repetition
of this, if it is not actually the original, is in S. Pantalone at
Venice. The other picture, dated 1446, of enormous dimensions,
represents the Virgin enthroned, beneath a canopy sustained by angels,
with the four Fathers of the Church at her side. The colouring is fully
as flowing and splendid as that of Giambono.

We do not recognise here, as Kugler rightly observes, the influence of
the school of Giotto, but rather the types of the Germanic style
gradually assuming a new character, possibly owing to the social
condition of Venice itself. There was something perhaps in the nature of
a rich commercial aristocracy of the middle ages calculated to encourage
that species of art which offered the greatest splendour and elegance to
the eye; and this also, if possible, in a portable form; thus preferring
the domestic altar or the dedication picture to wall decorations in
churches. The contemporary Flemish paintings, under similar conditions,
exhibit analogous results. With regard to colour, the depth and
transparency observable in the works of the old Venetian School had long
been a distinguishing feature in the Byzantine paintings on wood, and
may therefore be traceable to this source without assuming an influence
on the part of Padua, or from the north through Giovanni Alamanus.

The two side panels of an altar-piece, representing severally SS. Peter
and Jerome, and SS. Francis and Mark, now in the National Gallery (Nos.
768 and 1284), are ascribed to Antonio Vivarini alone, though the centre
panel, the Virgin and Child, now in the Poldi Pezzoli collection at
Milan is said to be the joint work of Alamanus and Antonio. However that
may be, there is no longer any dispute about the fascinating Adoration
of the Kings in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin, formerly supposed
to be the work of Gentile da Fabriano, but now catalogued as that of
Antonio.

In 1450 the name of Alamanus disappears altogether, and that of
BARTOLOMMEO VIVARINI, Antonio's younger brother, replaces it in an
inscription upon the great altar-piece commissioned by Pope Nicholas V.
in commemoration of Cardinal Albergati, now in the Pinacoteca of
Bologna. The change is noticeable as introducing