Renaissance_ rapidly spread
its influence over the world of art, sanctioned by the favour of such
master-minds as Raphael, and the great men of his era.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.]

It was not, however, to be expected that any style should be
resuscitated in all its purity without the admixture of some peculiarity
emanating from the art which adopted it, and which was more completely
the mode of the era. The Renaissance is, therefore, a Gothic
classicality, engrafting classic form and freedom on the decorative
quaintnesses of the middle ages. Fig. 1 is as pertinent a specimen as
could be obtained of this characteristic: the Greek volute and the Roman
foliage are made to combine with the hideous inventions of monkery, the
grotesque heads that are exhibited on the most sacred edifices, and
which are simply the stone records of the strife and rivalry that
prevailed between monks and friars up to the date of the Reformation,
and are therefore of great value to the student of ecclesiology and
ecclesiastical history. In this instance they seem to typify death and
hell, over whom the Saviour was victorious by his mortal agony: the
emblems of which occupy the central shield, and tell with much simple
force the story of man's redemption. Mediaeval art has not unfrequently
the merit of much condensation of thought, always particularly visible
in its choice of types by which to express in a simple form a precise
religious idea, at once appealing to the mind of the spectator, and
bringing out a train of thought singularly diffuse when its slight
origin is considered.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.]

The easy applicability of the revived art to the taste for fanciful
display which characterised the fifteenth century, led to its universal
adoption in decoration; but the wilder imaginings of the living artist
always tampered with the grand features of the design. The panel, Fig.
2, is an instance. The griffins have lost their classic character, and
have assumed the Gothic; the foliations are also subjected to the same
process. The design is, however, on the whole, an excellent example of
the mode in which the style appeared as a decoration in the houses of
the nobility, whose love of heraldic display was indulged by the wood
carver in panelled rooms rich with similar compartments.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.]

Heraldry, with all its adjuncts, had become so great a passion with the
noble, that the invention of the artist and student was taxed