THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 13 



little or no influence in France. Its leading characteristics are a strong 

 feeling for order and balance, and a general horizontality of effect, 

 produced by the emphasis on cornices and the general use of the 

 flat lintel, while the vertical members, panelled buttresses, and straight 

 pilasters are shallow and little insisted upon : artificial superposition 

 rather than growth is the impression conveyed. Openings and 

 recesses are round arched, or lintelled and framed in by architraves 

 or pilasters. Almost the only kind of tracery in use is in windows 

 subdivided by a slender shaft carrying arches with a pierced 

 tympanum above them. The crowning member of a composition is 

 either a pediment, pointed or curved, or a horizontal cornice. Domes 

 and barrel-vaults in stone and timber are frequent. Pinnacles and 

 lanterns became domed "tempietti" or statues, vases, candelabra. Shafts 

 took the form of balusters or small columns. Pediments were some- 

 times enriched on the extrados with crockets ; pilasters and jambs were 

 panelled in circles and lozenges, or decorated with arabesques. Other 

 typical ornaments were the volute, the medallion with its bust, the shell 

 to crown a niche or opening, or to enrich a keystone. The mouldings 

 were a refined form of Roman of peculiar delicacy and springiness of 

 contour. Chief among the decorative elements were garlands, swags, and 

 pendent knots of flowers and fruit with fluttering ribbons, human figures, 

 especially naked children, birds, dolphins, and mythical beasts, rosettes, 

 arms, and musical instruments. The carved ornament was generally of 

 slight relief and was sometimes replaced by flat decoration in colour. 



THE HYBRID STYLE. The style of Louis XII., composed by a 

 blending of these styles, comprises Gothic buildings with a sprinkling 

 of Renaissance detail, or conceived on Gothic lines, but carried out in 

 Renaissance forms, and the converse of each of these, as well as others 

 at different stages of development between these extremes, in some of 

 which the two styles are equally and inextricably interwoven. Again, 

 Gothic and Italian forms occur in juxtaposition even in the same feature. 



Since the results arrived at depended in great measure on the degree 

 in which masters and men were receptive of foreign ideas, and on the 

 skill and number of Italian craftsmen available at a given place, no 

 guiding principle can be traced in the combination of the two elements, 

 but as a general rule Gothic maintains its hold on the members, which 

 carry weight and enclose spaces, while Italian detail first invades the 

 parts carried and enclosed. This is natural, the builders being mostly 

 French, and the decorators Italian. Piers, shafts and jambs, plinths 

 and bases generally retained their Gothic forms and profiles, while sunk 

 faces and hollow mouldings, panels, and capitals were enriched with 

 Renaissance ornament (Fig. 10). The main lines of progress during 

 the prevalence of the Transitional Style lay first in the gradual extrusion 



