From thence he proceeded to Venice, where many of his most brilliant performances were achieved; but these, too, are nearly all lost to us. There, in contact with the busy world, and sharing its honours, distracted, it may be, by the bright tints and smiling landscapes just then imported from northern lands, his devotional inspirations were gradually tinged by naturalism. His principal commission was a fresco of the naval victories of the Republic; and I have seen a small picture by him of the rape of the Sabines, whose feeble paganism belongs, no doubt, to his later years, and sadly proves how essential were these inspirations to his success. At Venice he opened a school, which enjoyed high reputation, and which probably numbered among its pupils Pisanello, the Vivarini, and Bellini, although chronology throws a doubt upon some of Vasari's assertions as to this point. A new field of glory opened before Gentile, when invited by Eugene IV. to decorate with mural paintings the since rebuilt church of the Lateran, where he painted four prophets in chiaroscuro, and placed below them the life of the Baptist,--works unfinished at his death in 1450, and now destroyed, but which Michael Angelo, little qualified as he was to appreciate the delicacies of religious art, characterised as worthy the _gentle_ name of their author. On quitting the cloister of S. Marco, Gentile had carried with him a portion of the devotional feeling which hung around the studio of Fra Giovanni, and along with it much of the taste for rich ornaments, for gold and brocades, for fruit and flowers, in which both of his instructors delighted. But whilst Allegretto and Angelico kept such foreign aids in subservience to the predominating sentiment of their works, their pupil caught from the great world, in which he freely mingled with credit and applause, an admiration of mundane grandeur which, in his later compositions, is singularly combined with the spirit of religious art. His immaculate Madonnas are worshipped less by angelic choirs of cherubim and seraphim, than by the great ones of the earth in their trappings of dignity; and of all sacred themes, the Epiphany, or adoration of the Magi kings at the stable of Bethlehem, was his choice. Such is the magnificent altar-panel which he wrought in 1423, for the church of the S. Trinità at Florence, now one of the most precious monuments in the Belle Arti there. Still more gorgeous is his crowded composition painted for the Zeni of Venice; but there he has contaminated the purist spirit of Christian painting, for in the suite of the eastern kings is portrayed the patron of the picture, with all the gallant company who attended his embassy from the Republic to Usamkassan, sovereign of Persia. The unequalled variety of groups, the elaborate splendour of oriental costumes, the crowd of horsemen in contrasted attitudes, the lavish adoption of gold, form a dazzling but harmonious whole, which has scarcely any parallel in painting.