The foregoing examples are enough to show the leading characteristics of the church architecture of the early Renaissance in north Italy. In the later period the local peculiarities give place for the most part to the measurably uniform style of which Vignola and Palladio were the leading masters, and which has been already considered under the heading of Church Architecture of the Roman Renaissance. CHAPTER IX PALACE ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN NORTH ITALY The palace architecture of the Renaissance in north Italy which has the most marked local character is that of Venice. We have already, in the preceding chapter, noticed several buildings here by Sansovino, but these belong to the later Roman Renaissance style, and are thus not so distinctly Venetian. Several civic monuments, however, and many houses of the Grand Canal and elsewhere, exhibit the peculiar Venetian type. Among the earliest and most noteworthy of these is the east side of the Court of the Ducal Palace by the architect Antonio Riccio of Verona.[110] This richly ornamental scheme is wrought upon a foundation of earlier work to which the architect was obliged to conform, and this appears to have given rise to the irregular magnitudes and spacings of the openings of the upper stories, which are so noticeable, and are in marked contrast with the symmetrical regularity of Renaissance design in general. The long façade is in two walled stories above a basement in two stages of open arcading, with the so-called giant’s stairway giving access to the upper arcade. The ground story has splayed round arches on piers of corresponding section adorned with pilasters of neo-classic form, while the stage above has a pointed arcade on compound shafted supports of mediæval Venetian character (Plate VI). The upper stories are marked by entablatures, and the round-arched windows are flanked by pilasters reaching, in the principal story, to the arch impost, and then stilted to carry curved pediments worked in relief against the entablature that crowns this story. The top story is divided into two parts of nearly equal length, but of different height, and different design. The part extending from the middle to the sea side of the court is the lower, and has its windows flanked by pilasters reaching to the crowning entablature. These pilasters are raised on pedestals forming ressauts to a podium, and some of the windows are grouped in pairs, some in double pairs, and some are single. In the taller part the windows are taller, and show considerable differences of design. One group, consisting of a double pair, has flanking pilasters reaching only to the impost, with a stilt-block rising from the capital of each to the crowning entablature, while Corinthian colonnettes, with strongly marked entasis, support the archivolts--both pilasters and shafts being raised on low pedestals. Separated from this by a considerable interval is