s, if he had to reach it by himself, he would
have need of a much longer time and far greater labours. The truth of
this could be seen, ready for the finger to point to, as the saying is,
among many other examples, in that of Pisano, or rather, Pisanello, a
painter of Verona, who, having spent many years in Florence with Andrea
dal Castagno, and having finished his works after his death, acquired so
much credit by means of Andrea's name, that Pope Martin V, coming to
Florence, took him in his train to Rome, where he caused him to paint
some scenes in fresco in S. Giovanni Laterano, which are very lovely and
beautiful beyond belief, because he used therein a great abundance of a
sort of ultramarine blue given to him by the said Pope, which was so
beautiful in colour that it has never yet been equalled.

In competition with Pisanello, below the aforesaid scenes, certain
others were painted by Gentile da Fabriano; of which Platina makes
mention in his Life of Pope Martin, saying that when that Pontiff had
caused the pavement, the ceiling, and the roof of S. Giovanni Laterano
to be reconstructed, Gentile da Fabriano painted many pictures there,
and, among other figures between the windows, in terretta and in
chiaroscuro, certain prophets, which are held to be the best paintings
in the whole of that work. The same Gentile executed an infinite number
of works in the March, particularly in Agobbio, where some of them are
still to be seen, and likewise throughout the whole state of Urbino. He
worked in S. Giovanni at Siena; and in the Sacristy of S. Trinita in
Florence he painted the Story of the Magi on a panel, wherein he
portrayed himself from the life. In S. Niccolo, near the Porta a S.
Miniato, for the family of the Quaratesi, he painted the panel of the
high-altar, which appears to me without a doubt the best of all the
works that I have seen by his hand, for, not to mention the Madonna
surrounded by many saints, all well wrought, the predella of the said
panel, full of scenes with little figures from the life of S. Nicholas,
could not be more beautiful or executed better than it is. In S. Maria
Nuova in Rome, in a little arch over the tomb of the Florentine Cardinal
Adimari, Archbishop of Pisa, which is beside that of Pope Gregory IX, he
painted the Madonna with the Child in her arms, between S. Benedict and
S. Joseph. This work was held in esteem by the divine Michelagnolo, who
was wont to say, speaking of Gentile, that