Eight Corinthian pillars, with richly ornamented capitals, carried (I base this description on Lübke’s work) a superstructure which terminated throughout in an entablature, frieze and dog-tooth cornice. Of the seven bays comprehended by these columns, three, alternating with the grilles, formed the means of access to the other parts of the hall. The principal entrance, in the centre, was ten feet high and was finished with a semi-circular arch formed by a moulded architrave. The spandrels of this arch were decorated with figures in relief, and these figures were supported on caps which surmounted decorative panels forming columns without bases. The two smaller and lower gates on either side had square heads with crowning pediments. All three entrances were still more distinctly set off in the composition of the whole, the centre one by means of a rectangular superstructure in the form of an ædicule with a crowning pediment, the two side ones by a segmental pediment directly over the cornice, the upper members of which were the details of the pediment. The erection over the central gate, one may remark, is a blot in the composition: there is nothing to carry the eye up to this abrupt, unsupported rectangle, and it does not harmonize with the beautiful segmental pediments over the other two entrances. Such was the simple framework, which, says Lübke, thanks to the perfection of its arrangement and the beauty of its proportions, proved so admirably effective. But the Master contributed also to the decoration of every part of it all the wealth of his luxuriant imagination. And he made use of the patterns of the full Renaissance, such as were to be met with in Italy about the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the works of Andrea Sansovino. The columns, with their varied capitals in the Corinthian manner, exhibited a beautiful diversity of invention. Every surface, too, was most richly decorated; every member daintily wrought; the pilasters, shafts of the columns, pedestals, borders and doorways, were embellished with exquisitely drawn foliage-work mingled with masks and fantastic beasts in ever fresh variations. Especial mention must be made of the magnificent frieze of acanthus with figures of savage men interlaced in different moments of combat. Other friezes showed garlands, wreaths, and festoons of fruit hanging from the horns of oxen, and, between them, winged angels’ heads and cornucopias overflowing with fruit and flowers.