DAN ART.
With the development of Gothic architec ture, first in France, later in northern and cen tral Europe, and finally in Italy, wholly new resources were brought to the service of in terior decoration. Structural forms were mul tiplied and enriched, to enhance the decorative effect of the lofty vaulted naves and aisles. To the splendor of clustered shafts, grouped moldings, carved capitals, molded vaulting-ribs and intricate traceries were added symbolic sculptures and grotesques, and color was intro duced in the blazing glory of the stained glass windows. To a limited extent also painting i was resorted to in certain parts of the archi tecture and even of the sculpture, an decora tive pavement-tiles in browns, blacks, dark reds and yellows were used with discretion on the floors of choirs and chapels; but the chief color effects were in the windows, whose bril liant hues tended to kill the soberer tones of painted walls and moldings. Mosaic and marble were not favored outside of Italy, and the vaults were seldom painted at all. The English interiors, less lofty and majestic than the French, were on the other hand far richer in decoration, with multiplied complexities of shafting in black Purbeck marble, finer and more numerous moldings, and, above all, .mag nificent vaults in complex patterns of vault ribs. In Italy, in contrast with western and northern Europe, the mediaeval builders of the Gothic period depended upon color rather than architectural membering for interior effect. They often painted both the walls and the vaults; splendid inlays of black, red and white marble adorned the floors; mosaic was fre quently applied to restricted places or features, and the fixed furniture was of great decorative magnificence. Stained glass, however, was not much used; the Italian windows were small and far apart, and offered no such field for blazing transparent color as the clear stories and aisle windows of the North. The 14th century wit nessed the culmination of this Italian mediaeval art, above all in Florence, Assisi, Padua and Sienna. The mural paintings of the chapels and cloisters of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and the works of Giotto and his followers in Florence, Assisi and Padua are unsurpassed for pure decorative propriety and richness. (See Musa. PAIN• ING). The eUpperl) and gLower" church of San Francesco at Assisi offers the most com plete and perfect example of consummate in terior decoration effected solely by the brush of the painter without any aid from architec tural embellishments, to be found anywhere, with the sole exception of the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican at Rome.
Renaissance The Renais sance ushered in a new age and a new spirit in art. Not only were the fine arts thence forward no longer confined almost exclusively to the service of the Church, but they were also transformed by two influences — a new and enthusiastic study of nature in all its aspects, leading to a new realism previously unsought; and a new inspiration from the arts and culture of antiquity. There was great increase of pri
vate luxury, and a marvelous broadening of the scope of painting and sculpture as well as architecture. Palaces were made as splendid as churches, and churches were adorned with new splendors in marble, stucco, painting and gild ing. The dome became the dominant internal feature in church design, and often received a specially rich decoration of paneling and paint ing or mosaic. Delicate relief-ornamentation in stucco was combined with color, after ancient Roman models. Mural painting reached its highest development. Ceilings, whether vaulted or horizontal, were treated with especial mag nificence, with rich paneling or painting or both combined. Rome especially abounds in splendid examples of this consummate art of the 16th century, as in the Loggie (arcades) of the Vatican, the Camere or Stanze (apartments) of that palace, the Villa Madama, and of course the incomparable Sistine Chapel. The vaults and dome of Saint Peter's and many other ceilings are noteworthy; while in Venice the walls and ceilings of the hall of the Great Council and of many other superb rooms dis play the master works of Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Palma the Younger and others of the Venetian masters of oil painting. (See article PAINTING). With the close of the 16th century and throughout the 17th, decorative art declined — not in splendor but in taste. The love of display, the toleration of sham, the abuse of stucco, of gilding and of strong-colored marbles, and the introduction of theatrical and attitudi nizing sculpture, led to great extravagance and excesses of effect, destructive of real dignity and solemnity. Much of the interior decoration in Saint Peter's and nearly all that in the Jesuit churches of the 17th and 18th centuries, both in and out of Italy, is of this meretricious character. In Germany this ((Baroque' style of interior decoration was especially riotous and uncontrolled by architectural propriety, though often amazingly clever and effective. In France the Renaissance style, introduced by Italian artists at first, ran a somewhat similar course, but never reached the extremes of artistic extravagance noted in Italy and Ger many. Church interiors were much more severe, more sparing in applied decoration, and retained much more of structural expression and truthfulness. French palace decoration re ceived under Louis XIV and XV a peculiar progressive development, making much use of white and gold, and of delicate though increas ingly fantastic and Capricious detail, as will be later noted. Under Louis XVI and under Napoleon («First Empire") the tendency to ward fantastic originality of detail was reversed, and interior decoration became more and more classic, restrained and finally severe.