was attained in countless buildings beautiful and various beyond
description. Bologna is full of them; and Urbino, in the Ducal Palace,
contains one specimen unexampled in extent and unique in interest. Yet
here, as in all departments of fine art, Florence takes the lead. After
Brunelleschi and Alberti came Michellozzo, the favourite architect of
Cosimo de' Medici; Benedetto da Majano; Giuliano and Antonio di San Gallo;
and Il Cronaca. Cosimo de' Medici, having said that "envy is a plant no
man should water," denied himself the monumental house designed by
Brunelleschi, and chose instead the modest plan of Michellozzo.
Brunelleschi had meant to build the Casa Medici along one side of the
Piazza di S. Lorenzo; but when Cosimo refused his project, he broke up the
model he had made, to the great loss of students of this age of
architecture. Michellozzo was then commissioned to raise the mighty, but
comparatively humble, Riccardi Palace at the corner of the Via Larga,
which continued to be the residence of the Medici through all their
chequered history, until at last they took possession of the Palazzo
Pitti.[33] The most beautiful of all Florentine dwelling-houses designed
at this period is that which Benedetto da Majano built for Filippo
Strozzi. Combining the burgher-like austerity of antecedent ages with a
grandeur and a breadth of style peculiar to the Renaissance, the Palazzo
Strozzi may be chosen as the perfect type of Florentine domestic
architecture.[34] Other cities were supplied by Florence with builders,
and Milan owed her fanciful Ospedale Maggiore at this epoch to Antonio
Filarete, a Florentine. This great edifice illustrates the emancipation
from fixed rule that distinguishes much of the architecture of the earlier
Renaissance. The detail is not unfrequently Gothic, especially in the
pointed windows; but the feeling of the whole structure, in its airy space
and lightness, delicate terra-cotta mouldings, and open loggie, is truly
Cinque Cento.[35]