CHAPTER III
INFLUENCES OF UMBRIA AND VERONA
Gentile da Fabriano, the Umbrian master, when he reached Venice in the early years of the fifteenth century, was already a man of note. He had received his art education in Florence, and he brought with him fresh and delicate devices for the enrichment of painting with gold, which, derived as it was from the Sienese assimilation of Byzantine methods, was very superior in fancy and refinement to anything that Venice had to show. He was a man of a gentle, mystic temperament, but he was accustomed to courts, and a finished master whose technique and artistic value was far beyond anything that the local painters were capable of. He spent some years in Venice, adorning the great hall with episodes from the legend of Barbarossa; one of these, which is specially cited, was of the battle between the Emperor and the Venetians. Gentile was working till about 1414, and the walls, finished by Pisanello, were covered by 1416. After this Gentile remained some time in Bergamo and Brescia, and settled in Florence about 1422. The year after reaching Florence, he painted the famous “Adoration of the Magi,” now in the Florentine Academy. Even after leaving Venice his fame survived; pictures went from his workshop in the Popolo S. Trinità, and he sent back two portraits after he had returned to his native Fabriano.
We have no positive record of Gentile and Vittore Pisano, commonly called Pisanello, having met in Venice, but there is every evidence in their work that they did so, and that one overlapped the other in the paintings for the Ducal Palace.
The School of Verona already had an honourable record, and its Guild dates from 1303. The following are its rules, the document of which is still preserved, while that of Venice has been lost:
Rules of the Veronese Guild (abridged)
1. No one to become a member who had not practised art for twelve years.
2. Twelve artists to be elected members.
3. The reception of a new member depends on his being a senior.