Modern students say he did not, but that he picked up his way of painting in Italy.

Certainly he and other Venetians and Italians about this time improved their technical methods as the Van Eycks had done, and this picture is an early example of that more brilliant fashion of painting.

There is here a Flemish love of detail.

The Italian painters had been more accustomed to painting upon walls than the Flemings, for the latter had soon discovered that a damp northern climate was not favourable to the preservation of wall-paintings.

Fresco does not admit of much detail, as each day's work has to be finished in the day, before the plaster dries.