The architects of the Renaissance retained the Byzantine cupola, the basilical plan, and the plan of the Greek cross; they also retained the gallery over the naves, the two towers of the façade and the portico (_narthex liturgico_) of the Gothic style; but the sublime in architecture had disappeared, the magnitude of the mass, the imposing length of the line, the grandeur and simplicity of the conception, were gone for ever.[124] Florence was the cradle of Renaissance architecture, and Brunelleschi the first of its architects; he constructed, in 1425, the cupola of the Duomo at Florence, where ornamentation plays so great a part. It was not till the sixteenth century that the new style appeared in France, under the name of “Francis I.,” in Spain as “Plateresco,” and in England as “the style of Queen Isabella.” St. Peter’s at Rome (begun as a basilica and completed as a Greek cross) is looked upon as the great model of this style. But the Gothic style of architecture died hard in France, Germany, England, and Spain; for Christianity still clung to its mystic ideals. The change, to Italy, was merely a change of dress; but to those countries where the Gothic style had taken deeper root, it was a much more serious affair. That is why they did not begin to build their churches in the Renaissance style till the second half of the sixteenth century. “Gothic architecture was the child of the Romanesque style, from which it gently evolved; but that of the Renaissance was revolutionary, it despised the past, to which it did not feel itself a successor. The architect of the Middle Ages worked anonymously for the general good; the architect of the Renaissance was a personage, and his name has always been preserved along with his work.” We never forget Michael Angelo when we speak of St. Peter’s at Rome,--St. Peter’s the grand prototype of Renaissance architecture--the most perfect copy of which is perhaps our own St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was Michael Angelo who said, “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is not a trifle.” Neither the architect of Seville Cathedral nor the architect of Canterbury would have said that. But who will deny that the perfection of the Duomo, to take only one example, is the result of patient and trifling detail?