Jacopo Sansovino, who built the Library of San Marco at Venice (Fig. 411); Palladio (1518-1580), the well-known writer on architecture; Scamozzi, and the Lombardi family, may be mentioned as other celebrated architects and ornamentists, who executed many works in Venice and in Verona, Florence, Padua, Vicenza, Rome and Milan, etc., during the sixteenth century. It was the tendency of the Renaissance period to build palaces and castles, and in the later times municipal and private dwellings, as learning and the arts were getting into the hands of the laymen, in contrast to the days of the Middle Ages, when the clergy and monks were the architects and master-builders: in those days hardly anything but churches had architectural pretensions; but the case was different in the Renaissance times, when the architects were not bound by the strict canonical laws of _style_; hence we find a greater variety and wider range of ideas expressed in the art of the period, due in a great measure to the individuality of the artists, which has given to the art of the Renaissance a different character in every country, district, or city to which it had spread. [Illustration: Fig. 411.—Library of San Marco, Venice. By Sansovino.] The greatest Venetian architect of the seventeenth century, Longhena, flourished (1602-82) when the Renaissance had entered into its Baroque phase or period of decadence. He built many churches and palaces in Venice and in some other cities of Italy, but his greatest work is the celebrated Church of the Salutation—"Santa Maria della Salute"—in Venice, a picturesque building that has been painted and photographed more frequently than any other church in the world. With its domes and bell-towers, and its great buttresses decorated with figures that support the drum of the dome, it presents a striking object of picturesque beauty. This church and the Pesaro and Rezzonico palaces are exceedingly rich and ornate, but are overloaded with figures and decorative details—the Pesaro Palace especially—which is very characteristic of the florid work of the seventeenth century. Their magnificence of style reflects the palmy days of Venetian grandeur, and contrasts strongly with the simpler and better architecture of the early Renaissance period. The influence of the Italian Renaissance spread to France in the days of Louis XII., and Francis I., the monarch who did so much for French art. Afterwards, in the reign of Henry II. and Catherine de’ Medici, who greatly favoured Italian art and artists, we find the Renaissance taking a deep root in France. Fra Giocondo was summoned to France from Italy by Louis XII., who reigned 1495 to 1515, and caused to be built the Château de Blois, and the Château de Gaillon in Normandy (1502-10) In these two buildings the native French Gothic received a grafting of the Italian forms. This was the case in France for a long time, as in that country the Gothic style was then in the full zenith of its Flamboyant period.