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There is nothing more interesting and at the same time nothing more characteristic of this period of discovery and a achievement--indeed, it is a worthy prelude to Columbus' Century--than the fact that the very first equestrian statue, made in the modern times when all the difficulties, material as well as artistic, were heaped up before the sculptor, is one of the greatest monuments of that kind in the world's history. Only the "Colleoni," made a half a century later, surpasses, if indeed that is to be conceded, yet this was the very first attempt. This is not so surprising, however, if one realizes the significance of other work of this time. Within a half a century of the invention of oil painting some of the greatest masterpieces of that mode came into existence; within less than half a century of the invention of printing, some of the most beautiful books that have ever been made were printed. There has been a tendency in our time, as a result of much discussion of evolution, to think that such triumphs of achievement come only after long evolution and as the climax of a prolonged process of development. On the contrary genius at any time in the world's history takes hold of a mode of expression for the first time and secures a triumph in it that will be the envy and admiration of all succeeding generations.

While Donatello's success in this huge equestrian work might be expected to stamp his genius as much more fitted for monumental sculpture than any other mode of his favorite art, there is scarcely any phase of sculpture which he has not illustrated beautifully. The very spirit of youth is caught and fixed in imperishable bronze in his "St. George." There is probably no more successful attempt at the artistic rendering of the "little poor man of God" than Donatello's sculptured expression of him in his statue of "St. Francis" in the Church of St. Antony of Padua.

It was Donatello who, according to M. Muntz, the German authority on the history of sculpture, recovered the child from antiquity and gave it back to art. Some of his baby faces are among the most beautiful ever made, and yet without any of the sickly sentimentality that would make them pall. Their bodies are alive, their draperies cling or float as they touch their wearers, or are caught up by the air. Only his great contemporary, Luca della Robbia, has rivalled him in this regard, and it is doubtful whether even he has excelled him, though the world as a rule knows della Robbia for his baby faces and thinks of Donatello as having accomplished more monumental work. Donatello's "Bambino Gesu," infinitely human, and his boyish "St. John the Baptist," precociously serious, in the Church of the Vanchetoni, Florence, where they are seldom seen unless particularly looked for, are charming examples of Donatello's power of expression in child faces.

In Donatello, as in so many of these artists of Columbus' Century, the man is almost more interesting than his work. While at Padua doing the "Gatamelata," Vasari tells us that his works were held to be miracles, and they were praised so much that finally the master resolved characteristically to return to Florence. He naively remarked one day, "If I stayed here any longer I should forget all I have ever known through being so much praised. I shall willingly return home, where I get censured continually; for such censure gives occasion for study and brings as a consequence greater glory." His end was very sad. He, whose hands had accomplished so much, was stricken with paralysis and yet lived on for years. His pupils, with whom the great master was a favorite, took care of him, and even to the end took his suggestions, worked out his ideas and brought their work to him for criticism. Galileo, a century later unable to see after having seen farther into the heavens than any other; Beethoven, unable to hear after having written some of the most divinely beautiful music ever conceived, may be compared to Donatello, with his useless skilful hands.

Even this sad fate did not sour him, however, but only made him tenderer to those who needed help. He had no near relatives, and some distant connections, hearing that his end was near, and as Hope Rea tells in his "Donatello" , to which I am indebted for most of the details of this sketch, reminded him of their existence and begged him to leave them a small property which he possessed near Prato. "I cannot consent to that, relations mine," he answered them, "because I wish, as indeed seems to me to be reasonable, to leave it to the peasant who has labored so long upon it, and not to you who have never done anything in connection with it and indeed wish for it as some recompense for your visit to me. Go, I give you my blessing." The epigram, with which old Giorgio Vasari ends his all too short appreciation of the great master, seems the most fitting close that could be made to any notice of his life, "O lo spirito di Donato opera nel Buonarroto, ? quello del Buonarroto anticipo di operare in Donato"

This is almost the only great work in marble that we have from Luca della Robbia. He was a scientist, as well as an artist, and he was very much interested in artistic glazed work. He devoted himself to making this as perfect as possible and succeeded in adding this as a wonderful new medium to sculpture. Like so many other of the artists, painters and sculptors of this time, he was originally a goldsmith, but became ambitious of doing higher things than those usually committed to the craftsmen. Vasari tells us that he carved all day and drew all night, keeping his feet warm through the long winter evenings by covering them up in a basketful of carpenter shavings. He worked at the glazing of terra-cotta with the idea at first apparently of preserving his clay models by baking them.

Working in this new medium he brought to the execution of the models for it all his genius as a sculptor and succeeded in accomplishing some of the most beautiful results. He developed the medium so as to secure charming color, creamy white figures that stand out from a cloudy blue background, with a glaze that is perfect and joints that are almost invisible. It is only in comparatively recent years that a due meed of appreciation has been accorded to della Robbia's work once more, though his contemporaries valued him at his true worth, but in compensation for the neglect his pieces are now among the most costly works of art whenever they turn up at public sales. While devoting himself to the new artistic modes, he accepted commissions in both bronze and marble for the embellishment of Florence, and the bronze doors of the sacristy of the Duomo are his, as well as certain reliefs in marble on the Campanile.

"In fact," as Hope Rea says in his "Tuscan and Venetian Artists," "the total amount of work produced by him in the middle twenty years of his life shows him to have been one of those strenuous laborers in art, the like of whom have hardly been seen before or since the years of the Renaissance." Luca never married, but he gave every opportunity to his nephew, Andrea della Robbia, who was an apt pupil, but who confined himself practically entirely to the new style invented by his uncle. In spite of what might be expected, the young man, with the advantage of his uncle's training and the possession of his uncle's secrets, did not do better work, though the amount of it that he turned out made the della Robbia terra-cotta an important part of Florentine art. In his hands, and those of his son Giovanni, what had been as pure an art as any form of sculpture came to be merely a decorative craft. Andrea's many beautiful pieces, however, and especially the well-known "Bambine," the swaddled infant medallions of the Hospital of the Innocents, have been very popular at all times and have entered into renewed popularity in our day. The great series of incidents of St. Francis' life, executed by Andrea for the Franciscan monastery of La Verna, represents the climax of his art work. He was thoroughly sympathetic with the early Franciscan traditions and he expressed the details of them beautifully.

Unfortunately Verrocchio was seized with a chill while casting it and died at the early age of forty-three, or we might have had some still more wonderful work from him. He is a typical many-sided genius of the Renaissance, though in sculpture particularly only two, perhaps three, of his greatest contemporaries ever equalled him; it is even doubtful if they have excelled his "Colleoni," yet everything that he ever did was an advance on his previous accomplishment. His disciple, Leopardi, who finished the casting of the "Colleoni," is another great sculptor of the time who, in any other period, would be looked upon as a supreme artist. He has shone with reflected glory, besides, for his part in the "Colleoni," though it is very doubtful whether any but very small credit is due to him for the completion of this work which Verrocchio had left in such a state that but little was required to make it what it had been ever since, one of the world's greatest monuments of sculpture.

Cellini's autobiography, as great a work of imaginative art, very probably, as any that he ever executed in plastic materials, has attracted as much attention in literature as his great sculptures have in art. His name, then, has become familiar to many who know nothing about the intimate personal careers of the great artists of the time and who will in all good faith continue to draw their conclusions as to the character of the men of the Renaissance from Cellini's rather boastful proclamation of his successful vices, though this exactly represents the exception which proves the rule to be the opposite. In spite of his forbidding picture of himself he had moments of intense religious feeling and highest inspiration. Anyone who has seen his famous "Christ" in marble in the Escurial will not be likely to think that he was entirely lacking in deep religious feeling. His famous bronze group of "Perseus holding the Head of Medusa," to which deservedly the Florentines have given a distinguished place in front of the old ducal palace at Florence, is one of the masterpieces of modern sculpture. W. M. Rossetti spoke of it in his article in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" as "a work full of the fire of genius and the grandeur of a terrible beauty. One of the most typical and unforgettable monuments of the Italian Renaissance." His story of the casting of this great monument shows the difficulties under which the sculptors of the time labored, and yet how triumphantly they overcame technical obstacles and made great works of art.

Of course, for any proper estimation of the Italian sculpture of this period, the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo must bulk very large. They have been treated in separate chapters, and there is room here only to say that, while unfortunately we have almost none of Leonardo's sculpture, we have from his own great artistically critical generation traditions of magnificent accomplishment. As for Michelangelo, his own generation admired him only too much, and the almost inevitable imitation of his genius brought on decadence in plastic art much sooner than it would otherwise have come. His faults were imitated without any of the genius in power of expression that condones them in the great originals. If Michelangelo's sculpture had been the only contribution of this period to plastic art, that would have been sufficient to place it high among the periods of greatest productivity in this department of art. As it is, there were men who preceded Michelangelo whose genius is unquestioned and whose achievements have been recognized by the world ever since.

The sculptured work on and in the Certosa at Pavia belongs mainly to Columbus' period. It remains one of the great architectural and sculptural monuments of the world. It has its defects, which are mainly due to over-luxuriousness of decoration and failure to make the decoration and the structure itself harmonize, but it remains a beautiful example of the art of the time. It has continued to be ever since a place of pilgrimage for art lovers, and it will doubtless continue to be so for as long as this present phase of our civilization lasts. It contains some most effective work, and while not all of its sculpture is conceived in the true spirit of what belongs to plastic art, there is much of it that has never been surpassed except by supremely great sculptors, the men who are looked upon as the world's geniuses in this department. When the Certosa is compared with some of the churches which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were thought to be the highest expressions of artistic excellence, the taste and the ability of the sculptors and architects of the Renaissance become manifest.

Perhaps nothing brings out in greater relief the accomplishment of the sculptors of this period than the deep decadence of the art in the succeeding century. The only name that stands out with any prominence during the seventeenth century is that of Bernini, a man of undoubted talent, who, in a better period of art, might have been a sculptor of the first rank. Much of his monumental work, however, is thoroughly inartistic and has been declared "a series of perfect models of what is worst in plastic art." It is still more illuminating to learn that this work was looked upon in his time with the loftiest admiration. No sculptor in any period had quite so much fulsome praise. The eighteenth century sank, if possible, still lower in all that pertained to true sculpture, and sculptors often of great technical skill occupied themselves in making such trivialities as statues covered with filmy veils, through which forms and features could be seen, and other tricks of art. It was not until Canova came at the end of the eighteenth century that there was any gleam of hope for sculpture, and even this was eclipsed to some extent by the classic formalism which came in with it.

SCULPTURE AND MINOR ARTS AND CRAFTS OUTSIDE OF ITALY

While Italy excelled in sculpture at this time, as indeed in every department of art, the other countries of Europe practically all enjoyed a magnificent period of development in plastic art, not a little of it thoroughly national in character and some of the most precious of it quite apart from Italian influence. Besides, there was a marvellous accomplishment in the subsidiary arts and artistic crafts well deserving of mention which confirms the place of this period among the greatest of productive eras. A very noteworthy development of sculpture took place in the Netherlands, where in the midst of the rising democracies and the commercial prosperity there was a great outburst of artistic genius. Wealthy patrons had the good taste to recognize artistic genius and encourage it. There has never been a period or country when tradesmen proved more discriminatingly beneficent. It would be indeed surprising if the country that produced the Van Eycks and the first great evolution of oil painting with the work of Van der Weyden, Memling, Quentin Matsys, Gerard David and so many others on canvas, should not have given us sculpture worthy of this fine artistic development.

We do not, as a rule, know the names of the individual sculptors in the Netherlands, because apparently they looked upon themselves as artist artisans, whose duty it was to do their work faithfully and thoroughly, looking for no reward of fame and no special recognition beyond their own consciousness of having done good work. Their sculptures are to be seen in many places, in the cathedrals, the town halls and the other beautiful buildings erected at this time. Louvain, Brussels and many of the other towns of what is now Belgium particularly must have had many artistic workers in stone who well deserved the name of sculptors. They executed not only beautifully decorative work, but also full-length statues, busts, medallions in high and low relief, and plastic ornaments of all kinds. The high quality of their accomplishment can scarcely be disputed, and yet the lack of their names has often left the impression that there were no great sculptors at this time; the fine sculpture that has come down to us is, however, an emphatic contradiction of any such notion.

Some of the work done in the humble medium of wood is particularly interesting. The charmingly artistic wood-carving of the consecration of St. Eloi in the Church of Notre Dame at Bruges is a striking example. The choir seats of the Church at Louvain are quite as worthy of high praise, and the wood-carvings in the choir at Harlem so often admired come from this same period. Perhaps one of the best examples of the wood-carving of the time is the pulpit of the Cathedral at Leyden, which was made in this century.

The tombs of Mary of Burgundy and of Charles the Bold in the Church of Notre Dame, Bruges, still further emphasize the sculptural capacity of these generations, though, from the rarity of large masterpieces, there were apparently but few opportunities to display it on a monumental scale. These monuments, especially the older one, are supremely great works of art. A comparison of them is very illuminating for the history of sculpture in our period. Though constructed scarcely half a century apart, they are executed under the influence of the two typical but very different art impulses of this century. The tomb of Mary, made by Peter Beckere of Brussels in 1502, is mediaeval and Gothic in spirit. That of Charles, made by order of Philip II just before 1560, is a distinctly Renaissance work. The later is much more modern and obvious in the meaning of all its symbolism, but one need not be an artist to see how much more genuinely artistic is the earlier tomb. At first glance one seems almost a replica of the other, except, of course, for the figure of the deceased and the subjects of the decorations of the sarcophaguses, but it takes but little study to discover what a descent there is in the art quality of the Renaissance work. Nowhere can one see the value of the old and the new nor compare Gothic and Renaissance so easily as here.

Sculpture developed very wonderfully in Germany during the first half of Columbus' Century. The commercial prosperity of the time, the development of industries and the increase of trade caused an inflow of wealth into many of the cities of Southern Germany particularly, and not a little of this wealth found its way through the generosity of donors into the decoration of their churches. The people's faith was deep and full. Reform had not yet come to disturb it. Germany devoted itself especially to sculptured decoration in wood. An immense number of carved altars, pulpits, choir screens, stalls, tabernacles and other church fittings of very great elaborateness and usually fine artistic quality were produced. One of the first of the great German wood-carvers was J?rg Syrlin, who executed the famous choir stalls of Ulm cathedral, so richly decorated and ornamented with statuettes and canopies. His son of the same name did the great pulpit in the same cathedral and was given the commission for the elaborate stalls in Blaubeuren church. These were finished within a year of the discovery of America. At Nuremberg wood-carving also reached a high degree of excellence, and Veit Stoss of Nuremberg, though notorious for his escapades, was looked upon as the most skilful of artists for church woodwork. He was invited to Cracow to do the high altar, the tabernacle and the stalls of the Frauenkirchen. His masterpiece is the great wooden panel nearly six feet square, carved toward the end of the fifteenth century, with an immense number of scenes from Bible history, which is now among the treasures of the Nuremberg town hall.

Albrecht D?rer himself with Renaissance versatility took up sculpture and did not despise even the humble medium of wood. He was a clever wood-carver and executed a tabernacle with an exquisitely carved relief of Christ on the Cross between His mother and St. John, which still may be seen in the chapel of the monastery at Landau. The British Museum possesses a number of miniature reliefs in boxwood which were also made by D?rer, though he early abandoned wood-carving for art work in materials that might be expected to be more enduring. The influence of the wood-carving of this period can be noted in the work of the sculptors of the time, even after they abandoned it for stone and bronze. Adam Kraft's great Schreyer monument in St. Sebald's Church at Nuremberg, for instance, shows very clearly the influence of wood-carving. There is no doubt, however, about his high place among the sculptors, even of this glorious period, in the art.

The Vischer family for three generations executed a series of very great monuments in bronze, especially during the second half of Columbus' Century. The genius of the family was Peter Vischer of the second generation, who was admitted as a master sculptor into the sculptors' guild of Nuremberg in 1489. Perhaps the most interesting thing about his work is his absolute mastery of the technique of his art. Few men have ever succeeded in casting in bronze to such good effect. After having finished the magnificent tomb of Archbishop Ernest in Magdeburg Cathedral, in which some traces of Gothic influence still linger, Vischer obtained the opportunity for his masterpiece in the beautiful canopy for the shrine of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, a veritable triumph of plastic art. Modern, critical appreciation of it has very well corroborated contemporary admiration. Its details are a never-ending source of interest and study. Some of the statuettes of saints attached to the slender columns of the canopy are among the most charming examples of their kind that we have. They have grace and dignity, as well as great expressiveness. Near the base there is a small, evidently portrait, figure of a rather stout, bearded man wearing a large leathern apron and holding some of the sculptor's tools with which he usually worked that is considered to be a figure of Peter himself. It is a marvel of clever realism.

The story of the execution of this monumental masterpiece is of itself a lesson in the art work of the time. Peter was assisted by his sons, and they worked at it almost continuously for more than ten years, between 1508 and 1519. It was often extremely difficult for them to secure money enough for their work from the authorities who had agreed to pay, though stingily enough, yet they devoted themselves to it as whole-heartedly as if it was a munificently rewarded work. The smaller figures are executed with marvellous attention to detail, and every feature of the work, the graceful scroll foliage so abundantly used, the dragons and even the grotesques, all the details which crowd every possible part of the canopy, were executed evidently without the slightest regard for the time and labor which were required for them and with the good workman's delight in his work.

It has sometimes been said that these Teutonic sculptors of Nuremberg were mere workers in bronze who reproduced in that material the ideas and drawings of others. As pointed out by Cecil Headlam in his little book on "The Bronze Founders of Nuremberg," "The evidence of our eyes, which enable us to trace the development of their style, would be enough to refute that opinion even if we were without the documentary evidence which shows that father and sons alike were patient and painstaking draughtsmen as well as craftsmen all their lives." There is no doubt at all that they adopted and adapted many ideas from the great Italian sculptors of their own and the preceding time. They were deeply influenced by Sansovino, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, but they were not mere imitators and they were not plagiarists in any sense of the word. To quote Mr. Headlam again :

"They could apply the lessons they had learnt from their careful study of the Italian Masters, and apply them with successful originality. It is in the energy which lives in the King Arthur, the simple yet vigorous composition and execution of bas-reliefs, such as the Healing of the Blind Man of St. Sebald's tomb, or the Tucher Memorial, with their wholly admirable treatment of lines and planes; it is in the tender and spiritual feeling infused into the greatest of their bronze portraits that the unanswerable vindication lies of an imitation proved not too slavish and of a study that has not deadened but inspired."

Other cities in Southern Germany, as Augsburg and Innsbr?ck, and at least one city in Northern Germany, L?beck, are in possession of bronze sculptures which show how thoroughly alive was the spirit of plastic art all over Germany at this time.

Innsbr?ck possesses a series of bronze statues, all of them executed in the first half of the sixteenth century, which has always attracted the attention of the world artists ever since. There are twenty-eight colossal bronze figures around the tomb of the Emperor Maximilian which stands in the centre of the nave of the Cathedral. They are designed to represent the heroes of the olden time and one of them, usually looked upon as the finest, is an ideal statue of King Arthur of the Briton legends, famous for the nobility of the face and pose. He is represented in the plate armor of the early fifteenth century. The statue of Theodoric is also considered to be not only a very fine example of the work of the period, but also one of the world's great bronze statues. The difficulties encountered in the accomplishment of the casting of the bronze for these were so great that the Emperor invited Peter Vischer from Nuremberg to superintend at least this portion of the work and it is probable that his influence was felt also on the modeling. The designs are usually attributed to local artists at Innsbruck, however, of whose names we are not sure. In nothing are these older periods so different from ours as in the utter neglect of artists to make any effort to secure their personal fame.

French sculpture touched by the Renaissance reached a further triumph of artistic development in the first half of the sixteenth century. Two names particularly stand out, those of Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon. Though the first signs of that affectation and mannerism which developed as the Renaissance progressed are to be already noted in their styles, they combined great technical skill with refinement in modelling. Undoubtedly the greatest of the French sculptors of the time was Jean Goujon, whose most pleasing work is the marble group of Diana reclining beside a stag, which exhibits a power beyond that of any except the greatest Italian sculptors. He executed a series of sculptures for the older part of the Louvre which beautifully harmonizes with the architecture. His reliefs for the Fountain of the Innocents are one of the best known of his works and have a charm all their own.

The other great sculptor, Germain Pilon, trained under the influence of the Renaissance, did his best work just after the close of Columbus' Century. His group of the Three Graces bearing on their heads an urn containing the heart of Henry II, executed for Catherine de Medici, has been deservedly very much praised. Other men, Maitre Ponce and Barth?lemy Prieur, did work that has attracted much attention about this same time. A fine portrait effigy of a recumbent figure in full armor of the duke of Montmorency, which has always attracted the attention of those of critical artistic taste and is one of the treasures of the Louvre, is the work of Prieur.

The story of subsequent decadence is as striking in France as in other countries. No sculpture of any significance appeared during the seventeenth century, though some of the artists of the time exhibited great technical skill. Indeed it was not until the coming of Hudon, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, that there is any relief from the story of mediocrity or worse, and in his time the plastic arts had reached a very low ebb. Modern French sculpture is the result of the movement begun by Hudon, but it is separated from the Renaissance by nearly two centuries of debasement.

A very interesting and valuable development of the arts and crafts that came in the Netherlands at this time was in the execution of art tapestries. This is the period when weaving of all kinds came to its highest perfection all over the world. The fifteenth and sixteenth century Oriental rugs command the highest prices and are among the most beautiful examples of carpet weaving that we have. In the Netherlands and in France tapestry reached its highest perfection and the examples executed at this time are now the precious treasures of governmental museums and similar public institutions almost without exception and probably will not change hands again because they are looked upon as too valuable for educational purposes and the uplifting of popular taste for public authorities ever to part with them. In the Netherlands particularly, tapestry-making reached a climax of perfection. After Michelangelo had been asked to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Raphael was requested to do a series of cartoons for the tapestries to be hung around the walls of it, which were to be executed in Flanders. After their completion they were the admiration of Rome, and we have many expressions of praise for them from the great men of the time whose critical ability in all matters relating to art cannot be doubted.

Vasari has an enthusiastic tribute, which even discounting his well-known tendency to praise overmuch under certain circumstances, still serves to show how thoroughly satisfied this period of great art was with these masterpieces. He said:

"One is astonished at the sight of this series. The execution is marvellous. One can hardly imagine how it was possible, with simple threads, to procure such delicacy in the hair and beards and to express the suppleness of flesh. It is a work more Godlike than human; the waters, the animals and the habitations are so perfectly represented that they appear painted with the brush, not woven."

The tapestries were first shown the day after Christmas, 1519, in the Sistine Chapel for which they had been designed. Some of the greatest of the Renaissance scholars and artists and literary men were present on the occasion. It was the custom at that time to send as Ambassadors to Rome from foreign countries, distinguished scholars and amateurs. Many of these were present. All were enthusiastic in their admiration. Rumor said that they were quite unable to express all that they felt for these new works of art. Everyone present, one of the guests said in a letter to his sovereign, was speechless at the sight of these hangings and it is the unanimous opinion that nothing more beautiful exists in the universe. Another of those present wrote:

"After the Christmas celebrations were over, the Pope exposed in his chapel seven tapestries executed in the West . They were considered by every one the most beautiful specimens of the weaver's art ever executed. And this in spite of the celebrity attained by other tapestries--those in the antechamber of Pope Julius II, those made for the Marchese of Mantua after the cartoons of Mantegna, and those made for the King of Naples. They were designed by Raphael of Urbino, an excellent painter, who received from the Pope 100 ducats for each cartoon. They contain much gold, silver and silk, and the weaving cost 1,500 ducats apiece--a total of 16,000 ducats for the set--as the Pope himself says, though rumor would put the cost at 20,000 golden ducats."

Even this account gives evidence that it was not because of their rarity, but on account of their unique quality that the Sistine tapestries were so much admired. As a matter of fact, most of the ruling court families of Italy ordered tapestries for themselves that have since become famous and most of these were made in France and in the Netherlands.

There is absolutely no doubt left now that this is the period when the best tapestries ever made were woven. George Leland Hunter in his "Tapestries, Their Origin, History and Renaissance" says that the Golden Age of tapestries was the Gothic Renaissance Transition--the last half of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century--the hundred years during which Renaissance tapestries began and Gothic tapestries ceased to be woven, while many of the greatest tapestries were of mixed style like the story of the Virgin at Rheims. There are sets woven at various times during this period which are among the greatest tapestry treasures of the world. The largest of all these sets is the story of St. R?mi in the church of the same name at Rheims--sixteen feet high with a combined width of 165 feet. When exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1900, one of them, wrong side out in order to display the richness and solidity of the ancient unfaded colors, attracted the attention of amateurs from all over the world. The story of St. ?tienne in nine pieces at the Cluny Museum at Paris was presented to the Cathedral of Auxerre in 1502.

As a matter of fact there was scarcely a cathedral or monastery in France at this time that did not come into the possession of beautiful tapestries that are now very precious treasures. During recent years the value of such tapestries have increased very much and our millionaires have been willing to spend almost fabulous sums in order to get possession of them. We have had the opportunity here in America through the munificence of the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan to see some of them in the Metropolitan Museum and have learned to realize that the praise of them is well deserved. Mr. Hunter says that "the most famous tapestries in the world are the Renaissance tapestries, though the only distinction in most cases between the Gothic tapestries of the end of the fifteenth and the Renaissance tapestries at the beginning of the sixteenth, is that in one, whatever architecture or ornamentation or decoration is used has Gothic motives, while the models for these same details in the later tapestries is drawn from the Renaissance." The Brussels tapestries of the early sixteenth century are particularly beautiful and are the despair of the modern tapestry makers. Other Flemish cities, however, Arras, Tournai, Bruges, Lille, Antwerp became famous for their tapestries and Delft, in Holland, was a worthy rival. The art seems to require too much patience for our modern artisans to compete with their brethren of the old time, but doubtless with the rise and appreciation of artistic handicraftsmanship and the demand for charming decoration of homes and public buildings regardless of cost, we may look confidently for a development even in this line.

The other phases of the arts and crafts also developed very wonderfully outside of Italy as well as in the peninsula. Beautiful vessels for altar use, chalices, candlesticks, crucifixes and the like were made, and indeed this is the supreme period of their manufacture. Some of the chalices of this time were made by distinguished sculptors who felt that they could not devote themselves to more suitable art work than this for Church purposes. Under the inspiration of deep religious feeling some even of the smaller pieces are among the world's great works of art. Benvenuto Cellino made morses, chalices and crucifixes that are famous. Many of these were executed for patrons outside of Italy. His well-known crucifix in the Escurial near Madrid, made for Philip II, is a typical example. Processional crosses lent themselves to decorative effect very well, and some of them from this time are indeed very beautiful works of art. The same application of artistic craftsmanship was to be noted with regard to nearly everything meant for the service of the Church or for use in municipal building for the decoration of municipal property. The well-known iron well railing executed, it is said, by Quentin Matsys , when the artist was but a blacksmith and had not yet taken up painting, is a typical sample of the combination of the beautiful and useful which characterizes so much of the work of this time and carries away every point of admiration.

Some of the locks and keys and latches and hinges for doors made during this period are among the most beautiful examples of iron work in the world. The Cluny Museum in Paris possesses a number of these as well as other iron work of Columbus' Century which show that the men of this time had the true artistic spirit in their work. The armorers of the period made probably the most beautiful armor that has ever been made, and the finest pieces in collections, especially in national armories, are nearly all from this time. Scent boxes and jewel boxes of various kinds in the precious or semi-precious metals were always executed with fine artistic taste, or at least some of the best examples of these in the world come from this time. Clocks were made with a perfection of mechanism and at the same time an ornateness that give them a place in the art world instead of merely in the industrial domain. The furniture of the time is noted for its artistic quality, and some of the smaller pieces made by well-known sculptors or under their direction were works of art that now are thought of as world treasures for all time.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CENTURY

Just as the introduction of Greek ideas gave a new impetus to literature and art and sculpture and painting, so it did also, and perhaps to an even greater degree, to architecture. The effect of classic thought had begun to be felt before 1450. It was noted first in ecclesiastical architecture and its influence can be traced throughout Europe. Brunelleschi, who built the great dome of the Cathedral in Florence, died in 1444, but not until he had shown the world of his time how beautiful such a conception was and how it could be accomplished. He had gone to Rome and studied the Pantheon, as well as all the other great buildings which the Romans had left in that city, and during his studies, becoming enamored of the subject, he mastered every detail of their style and became familiar with every form of Roman art. He first completed the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence and then was entrusted with a larger work, the completion of the Santo Spirito, which Arnolfo and Giotto had left unfinished and apparently, according to the practice of the Middle Ages, without even a drawing to show how they intended to complete it. They would have given it a Gothic roof. Brunelleschi conceived the dome and then, in the course of his studies and designing, definitely initiated the development of Renaissance architecture.

The great development of this new style came under Bramante of Urbino, who was born the year that Brunelleschi died. His most remarkable monument in ecclesiastical architecture is the Church at Lodi. Alberti's work had been mainly the restoration of the Basilican form. Bramante emphasized the domical or Byzantine type. After these two the change from the mediaeval to the modern style of architecture may be said to have been completed and under the most favorable auspices. The dome of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which Fergusson pronounces "both externally and internally one of the most pleasing specimens of its class found anywhere," is another monument to Bramante's genius. Bramante is most famous, however, for his bold design and magnificent foundations for St Peter's at Rome. He did not live to complete this, but had his original plan been carried out, the finished building would have been in many ways more satisfactory than it is and would have exhibited many less serious architectural faults.

An excellent type of the ornate architecture of the Renaissance period is the facade of the famous Certosa near Pavia. The designs for it were prepared by Borgognone, a distinguished Milanese artist of that time, one of whose pictures will be found reproduced in the chapter on Secondary Italian Painters. He was much more essentially a painter than an architect, and this the Certosa demonstrates. Many an architect, with no ambition outside of his own department, would be eminently well pleased, however, to have succeeded in producing so beautiful and harmonious a design as may be seen in the fa?ade of the great Church of the Italian Carthusians.

The architectural monument of the century is St. Peter's at Rome, designed originally by Bramante, whose design was developed and harmonized very beautifully by Sangallo, but only after Raphael had carried on Bramante's work for some six years and Baldassare Peruzzi had succeeded him for an equal term, though without accomplishing much. The defects so often noted come from this succession of architects. Sangallo's design has been preserved for us and shows what a magnificent conception he had. Michelangelo's dome might well have taken its place in this design without any of the overpowering effect that it has on the structure as completed. In spite of all the criticism that may be made of St. Peter's, because, as the editor of the recent edition of Fergusson's "History of Architecture" says, "the big pulls away from the beautiful and there must be a compromise," it is one of the most wonderful of churches and one of the most marvellous structures that ever came from the hand of man. Fergusson himself is severe in criticism, and yet he says, "in spite of all its faults of detail, the interior of St. Peter's approaches more nearly to the sublime in architectural effect than any other which the hand of man has executed."

In England Renaissance architecture, that is the influence of the classical, had very little, indeed almost no effect during Columbus' Century. The genius, as well as the taste of the builders and architects of the time, however, is well illustrated by the development of Gothic architecture which took place in this period. The Italians of the Renaissance decided that the interior of buildings should be decorated by paintings. The English builders were yet in the period in which they considered that the interior decoration, just as the exterior decoration, should flow naturally from the construction of the building. These two styles are very well illustrated in two famous structures which were built within the same generation, though separated by half the width of the European continent, and which are triumphs of the respective styles of architecture. These are the Sistine Chapel at Rome and King's College Chapel of Cambridge, the plans of which, because of the inevitable contrast they suggest and the supreme effectiveness of both of them, deserve study. Each has a beauty of its own that advocates of either style cannot help but admire, and both give magnificent testimony to the power of the men of this time to express themselves nobly and beautifully in structural work under the influence of religious ideas.

The secular architecture of this period made as great progress as the ecclesiastical architecture, and it is of even greater interest because nearly all the ideas in common use among architects for monumental public buildings or ambitious private structures in our time are adopted and adapted from the architecture of Columbus' Century. As in ecclesiastical architecture, the Renaissance begins in Florence. The erection of two of the magnificent palaces of the city, still well known and admired, the Riccardi, formerly called the Medicean, and the Pitti, were the initial steps. The Riccardi was designed by Michelozzi and has a splendid fa?ade 500 feet in length and 90 feet in height. The Pitti is 490 feet in length, three stories high in the centre, each story 40 feet in height, with immense windows 24 feet apart from centre to centre. They show very well what the architects of this time could accomplish on this grand scale. Both were completed just about the beginning of Columbus' Century. After this, the Florentine buildings became more ornate, and yet with the ornament properly adapted to the structure and producing an effect of beauty that has deservedly won modern admiration and study. Probably the two most famous buildings of the first half of Columbus' Century are the Rucellai and the Guadagni palaces of Florence, the fa?ades of which have been much admired. The Rucellai Palace was designed by Alberti, the Guadagni by Bramante. As their ideas dominated ecclesiastical architecture, so now they were to dominate secular architecture.

After Florence comes Venice, and here the wealth of the city, its Oriental affiliations and the light and air of its surroundings gave rise to a series of marvellously beautiful ornate Renaissance buildings, famous throughout the world and especially known to English-speaking people through Ruskin's "Stones of Venice." The most famous of these is the Palazzo Vendramini, which may be permitted to speak for itself. One of the most beautiful buildings in Venice is the Library of St. Mark, situated exactly opposite the Doge's Palace and built by Sansovino. Scarcely less beautiful is San Micheli's masterpiece, the Palace of the Grimani, which is now the post-office. These buildings are familiar to all. To know them is to admire them, and the architects of every progressive structural period since have devoted much study to them.

The Chiericate Palace, another one of Palladio's designs reckoned among his best, has the objection that it is open and weak at the angles and solid in the centre and the centre is full above and weak below, and yet, after mentioning these faults, Fergusson says that there is "an exquisite proportion of parts which redeems this fa?ade and an undefinable elegance of detail which disarms the critic of Palladio's work so that in spite of the worst possible arrangements they still leave a pleasing impression on the mind of the spectator." This is, perhaps, damning by faint praise, but it is praise indeed from Fergusson. Many others have been most enthusiastic about this and other of Palladio's works, and one has only to look around at our modern ambitious structures to realize how much of influence Palladio still has.

In Genoa there are some very beautiful buildings of this time, though as their material, despite the name "the city of palaces," was mainly rubble masonry covered with stucco, the windows without dressings, the intention being to paint the architectural mouldings on the stucco and also to paint frescoes between them, the unsatisfactoriness of much of the architecture for modern study can be realized. In spite of these limitations, Galeazzo Alessi succeeded in making some very beautiful buildings. Probably the most admired example is the building now known as the Municipalata in the Strada Nuova, formerly known as the Tursi-Doria Palace.

Vignola occupies the place in Rome that Palladio holds in Vicenza towards the end of Columbus' Century. A charming example of his construction is the Villa of Pope Julius near Rome, the fa?ade of which is certainly his and which, without being ambitious, represents his power to express simplicity and dignity even in a summer house.

His great work is the Palace of Caprarola, built some thirty miles outside of Rome for the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. The building is all the more interesting because it has furnished ideas for some of the larger public buildings of our time and contains more than a suggestion for some recent architectural plans of somewhat startling character for New York City.

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