their real greatness,
meanwhile, consists in the feeling for spatial proportions and for linear
harmonies possessed by their architects.

Three periods in the development of Renaissance architecture may be
roughly marked.[29] The first, extending from 1420 to 1500, is the age of
experiment and of luxuriant inventiveness. The second embraces the first
forty years of the sixteenth century. The most perfect buildings of the
Italian Renaissance were produced within this short space of time. The
third, again comprising about forty years, from 1540 to 1580, leads onward
to the reign of mannerism and exaggeration, called by the Italians
_barocco_. In itself the third period is distinguished by a scrupulous
purism bordering upon pedantry, strict adherence to theoretical rules, and
sacrifice of inventive qualities to established canons. To do more than
briefly indicate the masterpieces of these three periods, would be
impossible in a work that does not pretend to treat of architecture
exhaustively: and yet to omit all notice of the builders of this age and
of their styles, would be to neglect the most important art-phase of the
time I have undertaken to illustrate.

In the first period we are bewildered by the luxuriance of creative powers
and by the rioting of the fancy in all forms of beauty indiscriminately
mingled. In general we detect a striving after effects not fully realised,
and a tendency to indulge in superfluous ornament without regard for
strictness of design. The imperfect comprehension of classical models and
the exuberant vivacity of the imagination in the fifteenth century account
for the florid work of this time. Something too is left of mediaeval fancy;
the details borrowed from the antique undergo fantastic transmutation at
the hands of men accustomed to the vehement emotion of the romantic ages.
Whatever the Renaissance took from antique art, it was at first unable to
assimilate either the moderation of the Greeks or the practical sobriety
of the Romans. Christianity had deepened and intensified the sources of
imaginative life; and just as reminiscences of classic style impaired
Italian Gothic, so now a trace of Gothic is perceptible in the would-be
classic work of the Revival. The result of these combined influences was a
wonderful and many-featured hybrid, best represented in one monument by
the facade of the Certosa at Pavia. While characterising the work of the
earlier Renaissance as fused of divers man