Never did the fine arts rise to such transcendent heights as in Italy from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries. The late John Addington Symonds, in his work on "The Renaissance in Italy," deals in a comprehensive manner with this memorable period, during which every city in Italy, great or small, was producing wonderful works of art, in painting, in sculpture, in goldsmiths' work, in woodcarving, in furniture, of which now every civilised country struggles to obtain for its art collections the scattered fragments of these great days. "During that period of prodigious activity," he says, "the entire nation seemed to be endowed with an instinct for the beautiful and with the capacity for producing it in every conceivable form." In the middle of the fourteenth century the Renaissance style in woodwork was at first more evident in the churches and in the palaces of the nobility in the Italian states. Some of the most magnificent examples of carved woodwork are preserved in the choir-stalls, doorways and panelling of the churches and cathedrals of Italy. The great artists of the day gave their talents to the production of woodwork and furniture in various materials. Wood was chiefly employed in making furniture, usually oak, cypress, ebony, walnut, or chestnut, which last wood is very similar in appearance to oak. These were decorated with gilding and paintings, and were inlaid with other woods, or agate, lapis-lazuli, and marbles of various tints, with ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, or with ornaments of hammered silver. The Victoria and Albert Museum contains some splendid examples of fourteenth and fifteenth century Italian Renaissance furniture, which illustrate well the magnificence and virility of the great art movement which influenced the remainder of Europe. In particular, carved and gilded frames, and marriage coffers (_cassoni_) given to brides as part of their dowry to hold the bridal trousseau, are richly and effectively decorated. The frame of carved wood (illustrated p. 35), with fine scroll work and female terminal figures, is enriched with painting and gilding. The frame on the title-page of this volume is of carved wood, decorated with gold stucco. Both these are sixteenth-century Italian work. In fact, the study of the various types and the different kinds of ornamentation given to these _cassoni_ would be an interesting subject for the student, who would find enough material in the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum to enable him to follow the Renaissance movement from its early days down to the time when crowded design, over-elaboration, and inharmonious details grew apace like so many weeds to choke the ideals of the master spirits of the Renaissance. The front of the late fifteenth-century coffer (illustrated p. 38) is of chestnut wood, carved with a shield of arms supported by two male demi-figures, terminating in floral scroll work. There are still traces of gilding on the wood.