Gentile da Fabriano

Gentile da Fabriano (c. 1370-1427). Italian painter named after his birthplace, Fabriano in the Marches. He carried out important commissions in several major Italian art centers and was recognized as one of the foremost artists of his day, but most of the work on which his great contemporary reputation was based has been destroyed. It included frescos in the Doges' Palace in Venice (1408) and for St John Lateran in Rome (1427). In between he worked in Florence, Siena, and Orvieto. His major surviving work is the celebrated altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi, Florence, 1423), painted for the church of Sta Trinità in Florence, which places him alongside Ghiberti as the greatest exponent of the International Gothic style in Italy. It is remarkable not only for its exquisite decorative beauty but also for the naturalistic treatment of lignt in the predella, where there is a night scene with three different light sources.

The Adoration of the Magi (detail)
1422 (80 Kb); Tempera on wood panel; Uffizi

Gentile had widespread influence (much more so initially that his great contemporary Masaccio, notably on Pisanello, his assistant in Venice, Jacopo Bellini, who worked with him in Florence, and Fra Angelico, who was his greatest heir.