in the splays of the jambs and archivolts, of sculptured reliefs on the tympanum and on the panels, and of shafted and gabled niches sheltering statues on the pilasters. The panels of the splays are flanked with diminutive pilasters which are superimposed with only a narrow fillet between those below and those which rest upon them, and the ornamental framing of the niches is made up of colonnettes carrying rectangular stilt-blocks on which small pediments are set. The elaborate richness of this façade is unusual in the Renaissance architecture of central Italy, except in the smaller compositions of tombs and pulpits, which in treatment it resembles. But profusion of ornament is a marked characteristic of the architecture of the Renaissance in north Italy, to which we may now turn. In Milan and Venice the neo-classic influences were, even more than in Florence and Rome, confined to ornamental details, and in these details the designers of the North had still less regard for classic correctness and consistency than those of central Italy had shown; while the larger structural forms of their buildings still remained essentially Lombard and Venetian. Much of the architecture of the North was, it is true, the work of architects from central Italy, but these architects were so far influenced by local tastes and conditions as to produce designs very different in character from those of Florence or of Rome.
A characteristic early example of this Northern Renaissance design in its most florid form is the well-known façade of the church of the Certosa of Pavia, dating from the close of the fifteenth century. The effect of this front is in its larger parts much like that of a late mediæval Italian one, but the details are pseudo-classic with strange admixture of mediæval elements. The general scheme is a reproduction of the pseudo-Gothic façade of the neighbouring cathedral of Milan, having nearly the same general proportions, and being divided into five bays by deep buttresses. The steep gable, however, which in Milan embraces the whole front, is omitted, and in its stead a horizontal cornice crowns the three central bays, and this, together with the strongly marked horizontal lines below, greatly modifies the general effect of the composition. In the smaller details there is no likeness between the two façades, that of Pavia showing a survival of Lombard Romanesque
