a century. It had hardly regained its fifteenth century
spaciousness and simplicity before it began to fill up again, but this
time with pictures and fittings of the time. In all directions he bought
with enthusiasm, but his real vocation, after the cultivation of Emma's
society, soon came to be the completion of his great and growing
altar-piece by Carlo Crivelli. What is usually a frigid exercise, a mere
ascertainment that the parts of a scattered ancona are at London, Berlin,
St. Petersburg, Boston, etc.--a patient compilation of measurements,
documents and probabilities; what is generally a mere pretext for a solid
article in a heavy journal--or at best a question of pasting photographs
together in the order the artist intended--Crocker converted into an
eager and most practical pursuit. Bit by bit he gradually reconstituted
his Crivelli in its ancient glory of enamel on gold within its ornate
mouldings. The quest prospered capitally until he stuck hopelessly at the
missing St. Michael. As it stood for a couple of years complete except
for the void where the St. Michael should be, the altar-piece represented
less Crocker's abundant resources than his tireless patience and energy.
He had picked up the first fragment, a slender St. Catherine of
Alexandria demurely leaning upon her spiked wheel, at a provincial
antiquary's in Romagna, not far from where the ancona had been impiously
dismembered. Fortunately the original Gothic frame remained to give a
clue to other panels. Next, word of a Crivelli Madonna with Donors at
Christie's took him posthaste to London. Frame, period and measurements
proved that it was the central panel, and the tiny donors, a husband and
wife with a boy and girl, indicated that the wings had contained two
female and two male saints. Between the St. Lucy (which turned up more
than a year later in an un-heard-of Swedish collection, and was had only
by a hard exchange for a rare Lorenzo Monaco and a plausible Fra
Angelico) and the sumptuous St. Augustine, which was brought to the villa
in a barrow by a little dealer, there was a longer interval. Meanwhile
the frame had been reconstructed, and a niche for the missing saint rose
in melancholy emptiness. A little before the sensational _rencontre_ in
Emma's den, the chance of finding a rude pilgrim woodcut on the Quai
Voltaire revealed the saint's identity. This ugly print informed the
faithful that the "prodigious image" of Our Lady existed in the Chur