288 Gentile da Fabriano
Further reading:Gerald W. Day, Genoa’s Response to
Byzantium, 1155–1204: Commercial Expansion and Fac-
tionalism in a Medieval City(Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1988); Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese,
958–1528 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1996).
Gentile da Fabriano(Gentile di Niccolò di Giovanni
de Massio)(ca. 1370–1427) Italian painter
Gentile da Fabriano was born about 1370 in Fabriano in
the Marches in north-central ITA LY. According to tradi-
tion, his family was of old lineage and moderately pros-
perous. His father was said to have been a scholar,
mathematician, and astrologer but became an Olivetan
monk in Fabriano in 1397. Gentile’s brother, Ludovico,
was a monk of the same order in Fabriano. Gentile him-
self was living in the Olivetan monastery of Santa Maria
Nuova in ROMEat the time of his death. A document of
October 14, 1427, speaks of him as dead.
Gentile’s style and output suggest that he was trained
in LOMBARDY, perhaps in MILAN. He worked in the then
popular International GOTHICstyle, to which he added
his personal, decorative, and exotic qualities. His earliest
works displayed the decorative drapery patterns linked
with the International Gothic masters; Gentile tempered
these practices and somewhat abandoned them after his
formative contact with Florentine art.
In a document of 1408, Gentile was mentioned as
being in VENICE, where he completed a painting for the
doge’s palace. Gentile was commissioned to decorate a
chapel in Brescia in 1414. The artist was last recorded in
Brescia on September 18, 1419, when he departed for
Rome to answer a summons from Pope Martin V (r.
1417–31). Gentile’s name first appeared on the roll of
painters in FLORENCEin 1421. He was SIENAin 1420 and
1424–25 and in Orvieto late in 1425. From 1426 working
in Saint John Lateran until the time of his death in 1427,
he was in Rome.
The altarpiece Adoration of the Magi, signed and
dated 1423, was Gentile’s most famous work in Florence.
It showed Gentile’s International Gothic manner tem-
pered by his contact with the austere art of Florence. His
rich uses of gold leaf and brilliant color were his personal
and typical International Gothic traits. With his usual
elegant and courtly style, the paintings interest in per-
spective and foreshortening reflected also influences from
the Florentines.
Further reading:Keith Christiansen, Gentile da Fab-
riano(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982).
Geoffrey of Monmouth(ca. 1100–ca. 1154)English
writer
Geoffrey was born in or near Monmouth, WALES, about
- By 1129 he was residing in OXFORD, probably as a
member of a secular ecclesiastical community. He stayed
at Oxford at least until 1151 and during this period wrote
his two extant works, History of the Kings of Britainand
The Life of Merlin.Geoffrey was a keen observer of con-
temporary trends in historical writing and combined his
observations with a fertile imagination and a consistent,
if not profound, philosophical and respectful outlook
about the Britons, a Celtic people who inhabited the
island of Britain before they were conquered by the
ANGLO-SAXONS.
In composing his legendary history, Geoffrey utilized
material from British legend and folklore. He also bor-
rowed from earlier LATIN accounts of the Britons. He
treated all his sources with great imaginative freedom.
The climax of this literary work are Geoffrey’s invention
of a glorious reign of King ARTHURand his description of
Arthur’s victories over invading SAXONSand a hostile
Roman Empire. The main themes of the Historywere that
history was cyclic, that civil strife created national disas-
ter, and that the goals of the individual and those of soci-
ety often clashed. In The Life of Merlin,a 1,500-line Latin
poem written in 1148, Geoffrey told the story of Merlin, a
legendary Welsh prophet and prince, whose prophecies
formed part of his History.
In 1151 Geoffrey was designated bishop of Saint
Asaph on the border of ENGLANDand Wales, where he
died about 1154. In the years following his death, his His-
torybecame widely accepted as factual. It influenced lit-
erature and the serious historians of the Britons and the
English for centuries.
See alsoARTHUR,KING, ANDARTHURIANLITERATURE;
BRUT;GILDAS,SAINT.
Further reading:Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History
of the Kings of Britain,trans. with an introduction by
Lewis Thorpe (London: Folio Society, 1969); Geoffrey of
Monmouth, Life of Merlin,ed. Basil Clarke (Cardiff: Uni-
versity of Wales Press, 1973); Michael J. Curley, Geoffrey
of Monmouth (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994);
Robert W. Hanning, Vision of History in Early Britain from
Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1966).geography and cartography Medieval geography
grew from the achievements of the Hellenistic Greek
school in EGYPT. However, the analytical methods of
Ptolemaic geographical research were lost, and it became
merely descriptive. In the early Middle Ages geographical
data were primarily compilations and summaries of clas-
sical works consistently interpreted in terms of Christian-
ity. Some important philosophers and theologians, such
as St. AUGUSTINE, were uncomfortable with the idea of
the ANTIPODESand influenced a lack of interest in geo-
graphical knowledge and the understanding of people
outside CHRISTENDOM.
The great encyclopedic work of ISIDORE OFSEVILLE
in the seventh century, the Ethymologiae,contained two