A characteristic early example of this Northern Renaissance design in its most florid form is the well-known façade of the church of the Certosa of Pavia, dating from the close of the fifteenth century. The effect of this front is in its larger parts much like that of a late mediæval Italian one, but the details are pseudo-classic with strange admixture of mediæval elements. The general scheme is a reproduction of the pseudo-Gothic façade of the neighbouring cathedral of Milan, having nearly the same general proportions, and being divided into five bays by deep buttresses. The steep gable, however, which in Milan embraces the whole front, is omitted, and in its stead a horizontal cornice crowns the three central bays, and this, together with the strongly marked horizontal lines below, greatly modifies the general effect of the composition. In the smaller details there is no likeness between the two façades, that of Pavia showing a survival of Lombard Romanesque forms with the pseudo-classic elements ingrafted on them. A prominent feature of the Lombard Romanesque architecture is the diminutive open arcade. This feature is extensively employed in the mediæval portions of the church to which this façade is the western enclosure, and it is reproduced, with neo-classic modifications, at the top of each of the two principal stages into which the façade is divided. The arches are here carried on small piers, and are framed with diminutive pilasters and entablatures. The portal has a pair of free-standing Corinthian columns on each side, bearing a ressaut of an entablature which spans the opening, and from these ressauts an arch is sprung with spandrels in relief crowned with a classic cornice. In each one of the other bays of the ground story a rectangular window, with classic mouldings and a cornice of classic profile, is subdivided in the mediæval manner with two small arches on a central column and jamb shafts. These last have a tapering form, with a profusion of carved ornament in high relief, and are like the shafts of candelabra (Fig. 78). The mediæval feature of a large circular opening over the central portal is enclosed within a rectangle surmounted by an entablature and a classic pediment, while this compound is flanked on either side by a pair of arches opening beneath a larger arch. To all this mixture of Romanesque and neo-classic features a pseudo-Gothic character is superadded by statues set in niches of the buttresses, and spiky pinnacles over the lateral bays. The details of this overelaborate composition, the work of several successive architects, have no merit in themselves, and the work as a whole is trivial and unmeaning. [Illustration: FIG. 78.--Certosa of Pavia.] Among the monuments of the early Renaissance in Milan are several of importance, and of these the church and sacristy of San Satiro are of special interest because they are said to have been designed by Bramante.[104]