24 
EARLY RENASCENCE ARCHITECTURE 
IN FLORENCE. 
(ILLUSTRATED BY THE LANTERN.) 
By RICHARD GLAZIER, A.R.C.A., Manchester. 
February 12th, 1906. 
The lecturer spoke for about an hour and a half on Flor- 
entine Architectural Art, mainly of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. Before conducting the audience over the 
early buildings of Florence, Mr. Glazier explained the meaning 
of the Renascence. Two streams of civilisation, he said, went 
from Rome, one towards the East and the other Westward ; 
the one to the east passing Ravenna to Constantinople, then 
called Byzantium. That which went northward and west- 
ward passed through Florence and Lombardy into the South 
of France, and afterwards through Normandy to England, 
culminating perhaps at Durham. He knew of no other city 
than Florence which has such an array of talented men— 
politicians, artists, writers, and architects especially. It was 
rather difficult to understand the versatility of those men,— 
goldsmiths, and from goldsmiths to painters, and from painters 
to sculptors—they could do almost anything ; they were giants 
in intellect, and giants in craftsmanship. 
Symonds had said of Florence :—‘‘ There was no check to 
the growth of personality, no grinding of men down 
to match the average. If great vices emerged more openly 
than they did elsewhere in Europe, great qualities also had 
the opportunity of free development, in saints like Savonarola, 
in artists like Michael Angelo. The April freshness of Giotto, 
the piety of Fra Angelico, the virginal purity of young Raphael, 
the sweet gravity of John Bellini, the philosophic depth of 
Da Vinci, the sublime elevation of Michael Angelo, and the 
delicacy of della Robbia and Roselini, were qualities which 
belonged, not only to those artists,*but also to the people of 
Italy, from whom they were born. Of men, not a few of whom 
were born in cottages and educated in workshops, who could 
feel and think and fashion as they did, we cannot doubt that 
