The latter’s work is chiefly associated with =Vicenza=, where his most important example, considered also his best, is seen in the double-storied arcades, added to the =Mediæval Basilica=. In the lower story he introduced the Doric order; in the upper, the Ionic; and, in both instances, supported the arches on small columns, while large engaged columns, acting as buttresses, occupy the centre of the spaces between the arches. This treatment has been known since as the Palladian motive. These imposing and beautiful arcades were executed in fine stone, whereas through no fault, it is believed, of the architect, his palaces in Vicenza are mostly of brick, with stucco front that has suffered from decay. They include the =Palazzo Capitania= and the =Palazzo Barbarano=, and the =Villa Rotonda= which was freely imitated by the English amateur architect, Lord Burlington (1695-1753) in his villa at Chiswick on the Thames. Palladio’s design of the Villa Rotonda is a square building fronted on all four sides by a portico, surmounted by a pediment, the roofing of the square sloping up to a low dome which crowns the central rotunda. At the end of his life he designed the =Teatro Olympico= of =Vicenza=, which was completed after his death by Scamozzi. In this he followed the directions of Vitruvius, but introduced features of his own, among which is the interesting one of an architectural background to the stage, built in perspective. Palladio executed work also in Venice, the churches of =Il Redentore= and =S. Giorgio Maggiore= being from his design, though the façade of the latter was by Scamozzi. PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS OF THE VENETIAN RENAISSANCE. The Venetians had developed a beautiful type of Gothic, touched, through their relations with the East, by Byzantine influence. It was admirably suited to the social requirements and taste of a community of merchant princes and wealthy middle-class, comparatively removed by geographical position from the confusion of the times. For the wars of Venice, conducted on foreign soil, left her unscathed, and during the fifteenth century she reached the zenith of her commercial glory. But the decline set in, when her trade with the Levant was blocked by the Turkish occupation of Constantinople in 1453, and it was confirmed by the passing of her Eastern commerce to the Portuguese, following Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route to India (1497-1503). But during the sixteenth century, though menaced both by the Emperor Charles V and the French king, Francis I, and engaged in almost perpetual struggle with the Turks, Venice maintained a splendid isolation and reached the height of her artistic development.