2l6 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



227. OLD SECTIONAL FIGURE OF THE PALACE. 



in which pairs of columns carry the winding vault, leads up to the principal floor. At the top 

 it is covered by a dome. These circular stairs have been much admired and imitated, but 

 the later Renaissance architects, by applying to them the rigid lines of the Orders, introduced 

 an element of confusion and contradiction which has never been successfully assimilated with 

 the natural form of the structure. It is one of those things which the earlier men had 

 done better, as we see at Blois, by an instinctive grasp of the poetry of its involuted 

 development. The great rooms are noble and spacious, but the frescoes and decorations 

 are not specially interesting, and the artists seem hardly to have risen to the greatness of 

 the occasion. The pattern brick floors, in red and yellow, are characteristic and interesting, 



228. THE ASCENT TO THE ENTRANCE. 



