Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/128

XV. — Renaissance Architecture. First Period: Early Renaissance, 1420 — 1500. The Renaissance (i. e. revival) is the name given to that style which succeeded the Gothic. It took its rise in Italy, and was in fact a revival of ancient Roman architecture. Gothic although introduced into Italy, and adopted, as we have seen above, to a certain extent, never really nourished there, nor supplanted entirely the classical style ; and when Petrarch revived the study of classic literature, that revival was the signal for a return to the ancient models in all the arts ; first in Italy, and later on in the rest of Europe. The fifteenth century was the transition time, when an attempt was made to combine existing styles with those of ancient Greece and Rome. In churches and cathedrals belonging to this period, the groined ceiling of the Gothic styles alternates with the Roman intersecting vault, and the civic buildings are a transition from the feudal fortresses of the middle ages to the palaces of a later date. We can trace in them a change somewhat similar to that which came over the lives of the old feudal barons — warlike sim- plicity giving place to princely elegance and luxury. The palaces were still distinguished for their ornamented fronts, as in the previous centuries, but pilasters and arcades were largely introduced. A principal and distinctive feature of Italian public buildings and palaces of this time* is the cortile (/. e. court-yard), surrounded by open arcades, over which the upper apartments were carried in the manner seen in our illustration (Fig, 49). Although it is impossible to deny that from a strictly architectural point of view