manner. The members which take part in the support of the aisle arcades are necessarily short, while those which carry the great pendentive arches are lengthened to reach the higher level from which those arches spring. But all of these members have the form of fluted Corinthian pilasters (Fig. 16). Thus were classic members used in ways that are foreign to classic principles, and their proportions altered with as much disregard for the rules of Vitruvius as the mediæval builders had shown. [Illustration: FIG. 16.--Crossing pier of San Lorenzo.] The church of Santo Spirito, built after the architect’s death, closely resembles San Lorenzo in its architectural character, though it is larger in scale. The entablature blocks occur in the arcades here also, but instead of a dome over the crossing as in San Lorenzo, there is a circular celled vault on converging ribs, like the vault of the Pazzi chapel. The interior is spacious and finely proportioned, but it presents no features that afford further illustration of the progress of neo-classic design. The retrospective movement was carried further by the Florentine scholar and architect Leon-Batista Alberti, who, says Milizia, is justly regarded as one of the principal restorers of the architecture of antiquity.[32] His chief designs in church architecture are found in Santa Maria Novella of Florence, in San Francesco of Rimini, and in Sant’Andrea of Mantua. The first two of these are mediæval structures in which Alberti’s work is confined to the remodelling of the exteriors, but the last was wholly designed by him, though the work was not completed within his lifetime, and the dome over the crossing is the work of another architect of a later time. How much Alberti did to the façade of Santa Maria Novella, the part of the building to which his work is confined is not very clear. Vasari speaks vaguely as if the whole front were by him,[33] but from a foot-note by Milanesi it would appear that he merely completed a part which had been left unfinished by an older architect, and the work remaining by the older architect is said to include all below the first cornice except the central portal, which is attributed to Alberti. Milizia says[34] that although it is common to attribute the whole façade to Alberti, it has too much Gothic character to be entirely by him, and that therefore a part of it may, with more probability of correctness, be assigned to Giovanni Bettini, an older architect; but he adds that the central portal is undoubtedly by Alberti. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--Façade of Santa Maria Novella.]