The more distinctive work of Brunelleschi in the new manner, however, is to be found in the smaller buildings that he carried on at the same time, such as the Pazzi chapel in the cloister of Santa Croce—the first completed ecclesiastical building of the Renaissance. It is a small structure, some 7o f t. square, contain ing an open loggia, an oblong main compartment (6o by 3o ft., approximately) and a square chancel with a square sacristy on either side. The loggia is a Roman barrel vault with coffering car ried on six lofty Corinthian columns the centre bay of which is larger than the rest and the vault is there carried up on pendentives as a small dome. Above the entablature of the columns the ex terior consists of a broad panelled surface and it and the entabla ture alike are boldly broken by a semi-circular arch joining the two groups of columns. Above this again is an open belvedere under the eaves of an overhanging tile roof and above again the main dome of the chapel. This composition then has no likeness to the facade of a Roman temple although in size it equals many of them. While using elements derived from Rome it is a light and graceful structure in which all the ordered parts of the design are made subservient to the main climax of the great central arch. The same remarks apply to the interior. The construction is very like that of the loggia, a dome intersecting a barrel vault. It is in white plaster, dark stone pilasters and entablatures outlining the architectural forms. Its note, like that of the facade, is lightness and elegance in which Roman forms and details have been used with a new delicacy. In place of the heavy tramp of Romanesque bays and piers we have here a building unified by its central dome and by its orderly arrangement of columns and pilasters, spiritual ized and made light and beautiful by the purity of its lines and the delicacy and charm of its detail. It is a new thing neither Roman nor Romanesque, but nevertheless with Roman complete ness and unity. The Pazzi chapel has been dealt with at this length because probably more than any other building of its time it gives the Renaissance outlook with its modern feeling for orderliness and perfection combined with the suggestion of Roman grandeur. Types of Building.—The two chief types of building on which the Italian Renaissance was to found itself were palaces and churches. In mediaeval times the Italian cities were full of lofty stone palaces presenting cliff-like walls to the streets and surrounding central, arcaded courts. They were a feature of Italian urban civilization with its city states. Buildings with flat street facades almost necessarily have an orderly arrangement of windows. To such buildings, therefore, it was easy for the Renaissance architect, thinking in a Roman system of units, based on the regular setting out of colonnades and their super-imposition, to apply his new ideas. The great overhanging eaves of the roof could be transformed to a crowning cornice, the pointed windows turned to semi-circular ones, the rough stonework reduced to a graded system of storeys, gradually approaching a clear ashlar face from which the main cornice could spring. Order was there already. All that had to be done was to introduce a higher sense of unity by seeing that every part bore some tangible relation to the whole. In this way we get palaces like Michelozzi's Riccardi and Majano and Cronaca's Strozzi in Florence in which the strength of the cliff wall is enhanced by contrast with fine detail and a higher sense of unity and power is reached.
The next stage in the development was the actual application to the wall surface of a series of pilasters recalling the Roman system of super-imposed colonnades. These were first used at the Rucellai palace in Florence by Alberti. The columns and their entablatures are here very tentative and are planted on top of the strong stone jointed face, which still dominates. A next step would be the grouping of such pilasters in pairs as at the Palazzo Giraud or the Cancellaria in Rome, both by Bramante. Following this idea through we have, in the more luxurious at mosphere of Venice, columns at each storey taking the place of pilasters and used in great profusion either singly or in pairs with one quarter of their thickness apparently buried in the wall.
The palaces on the Grand canal offer many examples, but it will be noticed that even in the richest the wall plane is carefully preserved and the cliff-like face, however articulated, remains. Florentine palaces, however, were never to go beyond applied pilasters until the Baroque period (see BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE) arrived. Indeed, it shed even them and produced in the 16th century the astylar palace in which all orders or columns, apart from those to windows or doors, are implicit. A Florentine archi tect, Antonio Sangallo, carried the idea to Rome with the Farnese palace from whence it has spread over the world.
The architectural quality of orderliness which produced the great palaces and stately churches of the Renaissance did not for a long time, however, destroy the lightness and fancy which the carvers, goldsmiths and painters who turned their attention to building brought to their new task. The smaller details of all early Renaissance buildings, such as wail monuments, balconies and screens in the churches, the furniture in the palaces, show, not only in Florence but in most towns in the north of Italy, a profusion of exquisitely drawn and modelled ornament based on classical motives but used with great freshness and originality. A Renaissance doorway would be applied to, or carved on, a Gothic church, as at Como cathedral, and it would not only form a delightful composition in itself, of ten in several planes, but would make an extraordinarily rich and delicate piece of decoration against its coarser surroundings. In such work, espe cially in Lombardy, pilasters and architraves were filled with delicate arabesques. Indeed, in many minds this rich highly carved detail constitutes the chief characteristic of Renaissance work. Those who think this, however, mistake the flower for the tree. The organic relation of all parts to each other and to the whole, based on the Roman system of axial relationship while making use of simple Roman shapes, is the essential trait.
The first half of the 16th century saw the migration to Rome of the best artists from Florence, Milan and other centres attracted by the superior opportunities that city offered under such patrons of the arts as Popes Julius II. and Leo X. Even the sack of Rome in 1527 did not stay building activities. It was there, under the shadow of the great monuments of antiquity, that the full use of the Roman orders (see ORDER) was recovered but without any attempt at imitating Roman buildings. This culminating period produced no Parthenon as a climax. The great scheme for St. Peter's, however, started on its career at this time with magnificent and entirely novel plans for the Greek cross building piling up to a great central dome. Bramante laid down the general lines and began the actual structure. Sangallo and Peruzzi followed with modifications of his plan and finally after further vicissitudes Michelangelo took hold of the work and carried it through. His great structure rightly belongs to the Baroque period, though the basic idea on which he worked was that of Bramante and the earlier architects mentioned, and though the building as far as its orderly procession of parts both in plan and section is a Renaissance structure. If, however, St.