Gentile da Fabriano

Originally a gilded processional standard that would be paraded through town on a pole for specific feast days, Gentile da Fabriano’s dazzling double-sided painting shows the coronation of the Virgin Mary on one side and, on the other, St. Francis receiving the stigmata.

In Gentile da Fabriano’s 1423 “Adoration of the Magi,” a famous biblical scene, the golden halos of Mary and Joseph are inscribed with Arabic letters, in a strikingly harmonious overlap of cultures and religions.

A priest’s wine-colored velvet chasuble decorated in designs of gold thread and thick, dimensional embroidery connects religious pageantry with the International Gothic style of an adjacent Sienese painting by Gentile da Fabriano.

The 1st Room has an interesting collection of the early schools, including Madonnas of Filippo Lippi; Luca Longhi; Botticelli; Gentile da Fabriano; Innocenza da Imola; a curious Crucifixion, by Jacopo d'Avanzo; and a portrait by Giovanni Sanzio, father of Raphael.

Gentile da Fabriano died about 1450.