P. 93.

c. 1548.

still so great a favourite with the French, that French and Renaissance are nearly identical terms. This style is, however,

is also remarkably developed in the remains

of the Château d'Anet,

Carved Door Panel from the Chateau d'Anet, now at
the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris.

near Dreux, in France (about 1548), and other buildings o£ that time, and it is indeed sometimes designated the Henry II. style.

The mixture of various elements is one of the essentials of this style; these elements are, the classical ornaments; conventional and natural flowers and foliage—the former often of a pure Saracenic character; man and animals, natural and grotesque ; cartouches, or pierced and scrolled shields, as above, in great prominence; tracery, independent and developed from the scrolls of the cartouches; and jewel forms. The whole history of art does not afford a parallel mixture of elements. It was popular in the Low Countries at the same time: the Bourse at Antwerp (1531) is one of its earliest examples.

Our own Elizabethan is a partial elaboration of the same style, probably introduced into this country from the Low Countries, the only difference being that the Elizabethan, like that of Henry II. of France, exhibits a very striking preponderance of

strap-and-shield-work; but this was a gradual result, and what we now term the Elizabethan was not thoroughly developed until the time of James I., when the pierced shields even outbalanced the strap-work. The pure Elizabethan is much nearer allied to the continental styles of the time--classical ornaments, but rude in detail, occasional scroll and arabesque work, and the tracery or strap-work, holding a much more prominent place than the pierced and scrolled shields. For the want of better information these two features are sufficient to date a building— the tracery or strap-work, without the shield-work, will indicate the time of Elizabeth; the predominance of shield-work that of James I., as at Wollaton and Yarmouth, Elizabethan; Crewe Hall and Canonbury House, Islington, of the time of James. In Crewe Hall, an early work, and attributed to Inigo Jones, the shield-work is not very prominent.

Such are four varieties of the revival, distinct from its perfect form, the Cinquecento. A design containing all the elements of this period is properly called Renaissance. If a design contain only the tracery and foliage of the period it would be more .properly called Trecento; if it contain, besides these, elaborate natural imitations, festoons, scroll-work, and occasional symmetrical arabesques, it is of the Quattrocento, the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century; and if it display a decided prominence of strap-work and shield-work it is Elizabethan. In all these styles the evidence of their Byzantine and Saracenic origin is constantly preserved—in the tracery, in the scroll-work and foliage, in the rendering of classical ornaments; and in the earlier varieties, in the shape of the panels containing religious illustrations, which even to the close of the Quattrocento are of pure Byzantine shapes, as they abound in the manuscripts.

The Renaissance is, therefore, something more approximate to a combination of previous styles than a revival of any in particular. It is the first example of selection that we find, and it is a style that was developed solely on æsthetic principles, from a love of the forms and harmonies themselves, as varieties of effect or arrangements of beauty, not because they had any particular