[8] The difficulty of combining the true spirit of piety with the ideal of natural beauty in art was strongly felt by Savonarola. Rio (_L'Art chrétien_, vol. ii. pp. 422-426) has written eloquently on this subject, but without making it plain how Savonarola's condemnation of life studies from the nude could possibly have been other than an obstacle to the liberal and scientific prosecution of the art of painting. [9] See Rio, _L'Art chrétien,_ vol. ii. chap. xi. pp. 319-327, for an ingenious defence of mystic art. The tales he tells of Bernardino da Siena and the blessed Umiliana will not win the sympathy of Teutonic Christians, who must believe that semi-sensuous, semi-pious raptures, like those described by S. Catherine of Siena and S. Theresa, have something in them psychologically morbid. CHAPTER II ARCHITECTURE Architecture of Mediaeval Italy--Milan, Genoa, Venice--The Despots as Builders--Diversity of Styles--Local Influences--Lombard, Tuscan, Romanesque, Gothic--Italian want of feeling for Gothic--Cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto--Secular Buildings of the Middle Ages--Florence and Venice--Private Palaces--Public Halls--Palazzo della Signoria at Florence--Arnolfo di Cambio--S. Maria del Fiore--Brunelleschi's Dome--Classical Revival in Architecture--Roman Ruins--Three Periods in Renaissance Architecture--Their Characteristics--Brunelleschi --Alberti--Palace-building--Michellozzo--Decorative Work of the Revival--Bramante--Vitoni's Church of the Umiltà at Pistoja--Palazzo del Te--Villa Farnesina--Sansovino at Venice--Michael Angelo--The Building of S. Peter's--Palladio--The Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza--Lombard Architects--Theorists and Students of Vitruvius--Vignola and Scamozzi--European Influence of the Palladian Style--Comparison of Scholars and Architects in relation to the Revival of Learning. Architecture is always the first of the fine arts to emerge from barbarism in the service of religion and of civic life. A house, as Hegel says, must be built for the god, before the image of the god, carved in stone or figured in mosaic, can be placed there. Council chambers must be prepared for the senate of a State before the national achievements can be painted on the walls. Thus Italy, before the age of the Renaissance proper, found herself provided with churches and palaces, which were destined in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to be adorned with frescoes and statues.