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 façade of the Certosa at Pavia. While characterising the work of the
earlier Renaissance as fused of divers manners, we must not forget that it
was truly living, full of purpose, and according to its own standard
sincere. It was a new birth; no mere repetition of something dead and
gone, but the product of vivid forces stirred to original creativeness by
admiration for the past. It corresponded, moreover, with exquisite
exactitude to the halting of the conscience between Christianity and
Paganism, and to the blent beauty that the poets loved. On reeds dropped
from the hands of dead Pan the artists of this period, each in his, own
sphere, piped ditties of romance.

To these general remarks upon the style of the first period the Florentine
architects offer an exception; and yet the first marked sign of a new era
in the art of building was given at Florence. Purity of taste and firmness