Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/656

 600 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE The outer walls of municipal buildings and private palaces now lost their rough fortress-like appearance, or retained a slight relic of it in rusticated stonework or in iron bars before the windows of the ground floor. Rustication, however, soon disappeared and the facing of the walls became smooth and elegant with the component stones carefully cut and with attention given to the arrangement of the incisions or grooves between them. Along the edge of the roof elabo- rately ornamented cornices took the place of medieval bat- tlements. Medallions and friezes, sculptured in low relief, decorated the otherwise rather bare walls, and inside the building the ceilings were coffered and the walls paneled. The three classical orders in column and capital were also now restored to favor and exclusively employed. The hori- zontal lines of the Greek temple, or the round arches and solid piers of Roman buildings like the Colosseum, were imitated. The shape of rooms and windows, as well as the general outline of buildings, all tended to become rectangu- lar, in which respect they were more like modern and less like medieval edifices, which had intricate arcades, vaulted halls, and lofty towers. A common detail of Renaissance architecture, which may still be seen in modern houses, was the placing over the windows of ornamental gables, either triangular like the pediment of a Greek temple or curved like a Roman arch. From this period, too, dates the delusion that the windows of a mansion should be arranged in regular rows and exactly above one another. Regularity and uniformity, indeed, now triumphed too much in archi- tecture over the picturesque and exquisite. In ecclesiastical architecture a new and disagreeable detail was the employ- ment of huge flat scrolls at either side of the facade of the church to conceal the meeting of nave and aisle. The largest structure of the Renaissance was the vast church of St. Peter at Rome, which some greatly admire and others sharply criticize, but it was barely begun in our period and was not completed until the seventeenth century. The great dome is the chief feature of St. Peter's, and the dome has often been represented as especially characteristic