It is with the fifteenth century that begins, in Italy as in Flanders (we must think of the carved stonework, the Persian carpets, the damascened armour, the brocade dresses of Van Eyck's and Memling's Holy Families), the deliberate habit of putting into pictures as much as possible of the beautiful and luxurious things of this world. The house of the Virgin, originally a very humble affair, or rather, in the authority of the early Giottesques, a _no place, nowhere_, develops gradually into a very delightful residence in the choicest part of the town, or into a pleasantly situated villa, like the one described in the Decameron, commanding a fine view. The Virgin's bedchamber, where we are shown it, as, for instance, in Crivelli's picture in the National Gallery, is quite as well appointed in the way of beautiful bedding, carving, and so forth, as the chamber of the lady of John Arnolfini of Lucca in Van Eyck's portrait. Outside it, as we learn from Angelico, Cosimo Rosselli, Lippi, Ghirlandaio, indeed, from almost every Florentine painter, stretches a pleasant portico, decorated in the Ionic or Corinthian style, as if by Brunellesco or Sangallo, with tesselated floor, or oriental carpet, and usually a carved or gilded desk and praying stool; while the privacy of the whole place is guarded by a high wall, surmounted by vases, overtopped by cypresses, and in whose shelter grows a row of well-kept roses and lilies. Sometimes this house, as I have said, becomes a villa, as is the case, not unfrequently, with the Lombards, who love to make the angel appear on the flowery grass against a background of Alpine peaks, such as you see them, rising blue and fairylike from the green ricefields about Pavia. Crivelli, however, though a Lombard, prefers a genteel residence in town, the magnificent Milan of Galeazzo and Filippo Visconti. He gives us a whole street, where richly dressed and well peruked gentlemen look down from the terraces, duly set with flower-pots, of houses ornamented with terra-cotta figures and medallions like those of the hospital at Milan. In this street the angel of the Annunciation is kneeling, gorgeously got up in silks and brocades, and accompanied by a nice little bishop carrying a miniature town on a tray. The Virgin seems to be receiving the message through the window or the open door. She has a beautiful bed with a red silk coverlet, some books, and a shelf covered with plates and preserve jars. This evident appreciation of jam, as one of the pleasant things of this world, corresponds with the pot of flowers on the window, the bird-cage hanging up: the mother of Christ must have the little tastes and luxuries of a well-to-do burgess's daughter. Again, the cell of St. Jerome, painted some thirty years later by Carpaccio, in the Church of the Slavonians, contains not only various convenient and ornamental articles of furniture, but a collection of nick-nacks, among which some antique bronzes are conspicuous.