beautiful simplicity and purity of the Grecian and Roman styles."

A few years after this date, Pope Julius II. commenced to build the
present magnificent Church of St. Peter's, designed by Bramante d'Urbino,
kinsman and friend of Raffaele, to whose superintendence Pope Leo X.
confided the work on the death of the architect in 1514, Michael Angelo
having the charge committed to him some years after Raffaele's death.

These dates give us a very fair idea of the time at which this important
revolution in taste was taking place in Italy, at the end of the fifteenth
and the commencement of the following century, and carved woodwork
followed the new direction.

[Illustration: Reproduction of Decoration By Raffaelle. In the Loggie of
the Vatican. Period: Italian Renaissance.]

[Illustration: A Sixteenth Century Room. Reproduced from the "Magazine of
Art" (By Permission)]

[Illustration: Salon of M. Edmond Bonnaffé, Decorated and Furnished in
the Renaissance Style.]

Leo X. was Pope in 1513. The period of peace which then ensued after war,
which for so many decades had disturbed Italy, as France or Germany had in
turn striven to acquire her fertile soil, gave the princes and nobles
leisure to rebuild and adorn their palaces; and the excavations which were
then made brought to light many of the works of art which had remained
buried since the time when Rome was mistress of the world. Leo was a
member of that remarkable and powerful family the Medicis, the very
mention of whom is to suggest the Renaissance, and under his patronage,