The Venetian authorities were fully conscious of the backwardness of their own artists. When the Ducal Palace was finished in 1365, they called to fresco its great hall not any of the various local followers of Paolo and Lorenzo, but Guariento from neighboring Padua. He executed the great Coronation of the Virgin which was later damaged by fire and covered by Tintoretto’s Paradise. The temporary removal of Tintoretto’s canvas showed for a time the crumbling remains of Guariento’s fresco. It is in an elaborate Gothic-Byzantine style and abounds in incidental architectural ornament. Below the ceremony of the Coronation there is a screen of pierced marble niches occupied by graceful angels. It is a motive that will often recur in the new century. On the whole Guariento brings little new to Venice, but he does demonstrate the decorative possibilities of the local style. His influence was restricted because the Venetians soon ceased to work in fresco. The impetus necessary to lift Venetian painting out of its routine condition was supplied in the fifteenth century by Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello. Gentile, who worked in the Ducal Palace about 1410, commanded both the exquisiteness of the Sienese style and its narrative breadth. Unhappily his Venetian frescoes which are lauded in contemporary accounts have perished. His sweetness and ideality are attested by various Madonnas. We may infer his raciness and vivacity as a narrative painter from the predella of his master work, the Adoration of the Kings (1423). The little panel of the Presentation in the Temple is admirable for its architectural inscenation and for the actuality of its incidental figures. We have a man whose eye takes in the look of things. This is even more the case with Pisanello (1397–1455), who worked a little later in the same hall. He has severe notions of draughtsmanship, as befitted the greatest of all medallists. He brought from Verona, where his artistic ideas were formed, the ideal of elaborate and credible setting, especially as regards the relations of figures to architecture. In his ruined fresco of St. George of Verona, Figure 209, we may catch his quality. But the Veronese style is really better represented by such immediate predecessors as Avanzo and Altichiero. Jointly about 1385 they frescoed the great Oratorio of St. George at Padua. Especially remarkable are the legends of the titular saint, Figure 210. Through repainting one may still discern the dignity and discretion of the arrangement, and in particular the just and tasteful elaboration of contemporary architectural features. Florentine and Sienese frescoes of the time are hardly as accomplished. The festal value of the architecture persists as a leading ideal of the school of Verona down to her greatest master, Paolo Veronese, and the ideal was taken up with conviction at Venice—became indeed the distinctive feature of her narrative school. [Illustration: