The church of SS. Gervais and Protais at Gisors has a Flamboyant west front in parts of which Renaissance features have been inserted in different degrees of compromise with Gothic forms and adjustments. The north tower below the cornice has no such features, but the south tower has been completely masked by a late Renaissance covering in three stories of pseudo-classic orders of which the uppermost is incomplete. The main portal is flanked by pilasters, and has splayed jambs and a splayed archivolt, with an entablature at the impost. A segmental arch over this supports a ledge on which is set a tabernacle of three arches, faced by a Corinthian order having no continuous entablature but only entablature blocks, and an attic over the central arch crowned with a curved pediment. It is unnecessary to analyze this west front further; it presents one of the most confused jumbles of incongruous elements anywhere to be met with. A different manifestation of Renaissance caprice is found in the florid exterior of the apse of St. Pierre of Caen, which is made up of details of a sixteenth-century Lombard character applied to a Flamboyant structural scheme. The round arch and the complete circle take here the place of the pointed forms, and pilasters against the angles have short Flamboyant buttresses set against them, the faces of these buttresses being treated like Lombard Renaissance pilasters. One of the most remarkable designs to be found in the Renaissance church architecture of France is that of the portal of the north transept of St. Maclou of Pontoise. It belongs to the early period, and is much like what we have seen in the portal of the château of Azay le Rideau (p. 182). The opening is round-arched and has a narrow splay. It is flanked by pilasters and crowned with an entablature surmounted with a fanciful pediment of broken outline, ornamented with a tablet and death’s-head, and flanked by finials of nondescript design. This portal is again flanked by colossal pilasters, rising from pedestals almost as high as the arch impost, and reaching to the cornice at the level of the aisle roof. Against each of these pilasters a short, fluted column, with a capital of pseudo-composite form, rises from a pedestal engaged with the pilaster pedestal. The portion of the pilaster that rises above this column is treated like a niche, with a base resting on the capital of the column, and with an ornamental canopy above that rises through the capital of the pilaster. It is unnecessary to extend further these tiresome descriptions. The foregoing examples are enough to show how irrational was the use made of neo-classic details in the church architecture of the French Renaissance, and how they were engrafted on a Gothic structural scheme. It was in this manner that the French architects of the time sought to “reform the Gothic and bastard styles.” CHAPTER XIII ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND