Toward the close of the style, and before the rebirth of Classic art had completely superseded Gothic architecture, a curious transitional style had a brief sway, in which both were blended. The wing of the Chateau de Blois, built by Louis XII., and the Chateau de Gaillon, built by Cardinal Amboise, in the year 1500, the façade of which is now preserved in the courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, may be regarded as the best specimens of this charming and short-lived art. The churches of St. Etienne du Mont, and St. Eustache, at Paris, may be added to these as typical of the contemporary religious edifices. In them we see the last throes of a dying style which had become extravagant and distorted in its final efforts to survive, but retained traces of its former beauty even in its expiring moments. The Gothic style arose in the latter half of the twelfth century, it attained its greatest purity and simplicity in the thirteenth; during the fourteenth a more extensive use of ornament was introduced, in consequence of which it has been termed Decorated Gothic; finally, in the fifteenth, its principles and principal features were exaggerated and pushed to their utmost limits, until its brilliancy, flickering in the flamboyant traceries of the latest period, expired and gave place to a Classic revival. XI. THE RENAISSANCE. A not uncommon error is made in applying the name Renaissance only to the delicately treated style of revived Classic art, such as was prevalent in France during the reigns of Francis the First, and his immediate successors. The word—derived from the verb _renaître_, signifying in French the rebirth (of the classics understood)—cannot, however, be confined to any such narrowed limits, for no new style having been substituted since, it is as correct a term to-day as it was in the sixteenth century. There is certainly a distinction between the first brilliant productions of the revival, and the more ponderous buildings which succeeded them, but Early and Late Renaissance express this satisfactorily. It did not always follow, however, that all the work which, from its characteristics, would be classified under the first head, necessarily antedated that belonging to the later period. In Italy, where the works of the Romans were too colossal to be utterly destroyed, and too conspicuous to be easily forgotten, the first movement naturally took place to reawaken the long dormant art, by which they had been produced.