It is characteristic of the use of the pattern books that the motives of decoration employed in the exterior and interior embellishment are used also in the furniture of the period, which on the whole is distinguished by its massiveness, exuberance of ornament, and the mechanical method of the workmanship. For much of the ornament is either cut out of the flat wood with a jig-saw or carved upon forms that have been turned upon a lathe. ANGLO-ITALIAN PERIOD With the accession of Charles I commenced an era of more refined and cultivated taste. The King, as a young man, escorted by the pleasure-loving Duke of Buckingham, had visited the Court of Spain in search of a wife, and had seen the wonderful array of Titians and Rubens’s in the Royal Gallery. Later he had married Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henri IV, who, under the inspiration of his wife, Marie de’ Medici, was introducing the classical style into French architecture. =Inigo Jones.=--Charles himself had planned to erect a palace at Whitehall that should surpass the Louvre in grandeur and found in Inigo Jones (1573-1652) an architect fully qualified for the ambitious enterprise. He had made a prolonged study of the Renaissance style in Italy, spending much of the time in Vicenza, where he had become an ardent admirer of Palladio’s work. =Whitehall Palace.=--His plan of =Whitehall Palace= provided for an immense rectangle, 1152 by 720 feet, surrounded by façades, three stories high. The interior court was to be divided into three parts by two wings of two stories, which were to be united to the main side-façades by transverse wings, so that the plan would have embraced a large court and six smaller courts, one being circular in plan. However, a scheme of such magnificence was entirely beyond the King’s means and the only part erected was a small portion of one of the interior wings--the =Banqueting House=, which now abuts on the street that retains the name, Whitehall. The façade that it presents to the latter is in the Paladian style and of extreme purity. Constructed throughout of fine, rusticated masonry, it consists, above the basement, of two stories, decorated, respectively, with the Ionic and the Corinthian orders, while a well-proportioned cornice, surmounted by a balustrade, defines the sky-line. An admirable feature, apparently originated by Inigo Jones, for it is not found in Italy, is the slight prominence given to the central three window bays by substituting columns for pilasters and breaking the entablature and cornice round them. The interior contains a handsome vaulted hall, divided into three aisles.