kept its original stamp, and Vasari’s words remain true—that Tuscan architecture has produced no richer or grander creation. This grandeur is united with the greatest simplicity; and it is the absence of all ornament upon the three stages of rustic-work, with their gigantic bow-windows, crowned with galleries, which gives the building its peculiar character. The palace is said to have been begun in 1440, long before the time of Luca Pitti’s ephemeral greatness.[130] His villa at Rusciano was begun about the time of Brunelleschi’s death, so that the great artist saw little of the execution of his plan, which was carried on by Luca Fancelli. While Brunelleschi here aimed at attaining the whole effect by the majesty and harmony of the proportions, in the palace of Jacopo de’ Pazzi he allowed more play to decoration. It is doubtful whether Cosimo de’ Medici employed the most learned artist of the time, Leon Batista Alberti. His chief works in Florence, with one exception, were executed for the Rucellai. Among them may be mentioned the palace, the loggia, the upper part of the façade of Sta. Maria Novella, finished in 1470; and the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at San Pancrazio, an imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[131] The Rucellai palace, in which are retained the bow-windows divided by small columns, points to the days of Bramante. It exhibits a combination of flat decorative pilasters of various orders with smooth rustic-work, antique ornaments on the rectangular doors, and traces of the square form in the bow-windows. Alberti also made designs for another work, which has given occasion to so many objections that its defects have been attributed to alterations by another hand. This is the choir of the Annunziata, commenced in 1451 by Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who, as victorious commander-in-chief of the Republic, desired to found a memorial at once of his piety and his thankfulness. A quarter of a century elapsed before the building was finished by Luca Fancelli. The exterior is octagonal, the interior round, with several chapels in irregular order, and numerous windows round the base of the large cupola, which is closed, and was ornamented in the seventeenth century with figures in fresco. In our own day redecoration has given to the choir as well as the rest of this dazzlingly-gilt church a thoroughly modern appearance.[132]