Gentile da Fabriano

When Gentile da Fabriano finished his 'Adoration of the Magi' for a Florentine banker in 1423, he delivered a small kingdom of gold. The three kings and their retinue wind down from the hills in a glittering procession of brocade, exotic animals, and tooled gold haloes, everything as rich and detailed as a jewel box. It is the high point of the courtly style called International Gothic.

Gentile was one of the most sought-after painters in Italy, and he moved from court to court and city to city, Venice, Florence, Siena, and finally Rome, praised everywhere and paid well. Little of his large-scale work survives, so the surviving panels carry his whole reputation.

He was at work on frescoes in the Roman basilica of Saint John Lateran when he died in 1427, and the young painter Pisanello, who worked in the same jewel-like manner, was brought in to finish them, though that whole cycle has since been lost.