Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/29

 church still stood for moral order and spiritual aspirations. The revolt against it was in part a revolt against both religion and morals. The animating spirit of the movement contained much that was unchristian and destructive of high ideals.

It is true that noble, and even pious, feelings survived in the minds of many men, especially during the early Renaissance time. Generous acts were still common among the merchant princes of Florence. In the early part of the fifteenth century the lives of Florentine patricians continued to be simple, and many of them recognized the responsibilities which their wealth imposed. But toward the close of that century a different spirit prevailed. Luxury and extravagance took the place of plainer living, the pursuit of pleasure without regard to justice or morality engrossed the minds of men, and vice and crime flourished in high places until the prophetic denunciations of Savonarola were called down upon the wickedness and vanity of the upper classes.

Into the service of this luxurious and immoral life the Fine Arts were now called, and of the motives which animate such life they become largely an expression. The mediæval endeavour to embody the beauty of Christian ideals in works of art gave place to the desire to make the Fine Arts minister to sensuous pleasure and to mundane pride. In the height of its splendour the vicious life of Florence, the chief centre of literary and artistic productions, was appalling. Men now not only sought to escape from all forms of ecclesiastical and ascetic restraint; they went further, and freely proclaimed the sufficiency of intellectual, aesthetic, and sensuous enjoyments to satisfy the whole of man's nature. They mistook the illusive pleasures of self-indulgence for the true joys of life. In abandoning himself to mundane pursuits and gratifications, the man of the Renaissance fancied that he got the utmost good out of this life, and took little thought of any other.

In a corresponding spirit the architect now set himself to the task of producing a luxurious and specious style of palatial architecture, drawing his inspiration from the monuments of imperial Rome, and the sculptor and the painter sought to portray physical beauty as the primary and sufficient end of their art. Their