In Florence the Medici led the way, the Strozzi following them close. Then all the other old families, Guicciardini, Rinuccini, Antinori, Borghini, etc., also called in the masters of the Florentine Guild to make them palaces. Cronaca, Sangallo, Baccio d'Agnolo, all names whose ancestors were well known at either Siena, Orvieto, or in Lombardy, made the plans and directed the works. And one who compares these palaces one with another, cannot but confess that different as were the hands that fashioned them, one type and one style shows through them all, which is to say that the architects were all brethren of the same guild, and had received the same training. The Florentine palace bore on its face the imprint of its race; you can trace it gradually from the Brolio of Lombard times, through the mediæval fortress, and the republican public palace. Here in the Riccardi and Strozzi, the Pitti and Guadagni Palaces, is the same solidity of architecture; but instead of the smooth hewn blocks, the huge stones are left rough, _alla rustica_.[197] Here are the same shaped windows, enlarged and beautified with tracery and mullion in place of the ancient column, but directly derived from the older form. Here is the ancient crown of Lombard archlets diminished into a rich cornice; it is only in the older buildings that the battlements are seen above, as in the Palazzo Ferroni. In the interior the cortile, with its arched and pillared _loggie_ around it, holds its own in the centre of the building. There is little change of form between the Court of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1299 and the Riccardi, Strozzi, and a score of other private palaces of the fifteenth century. The _loggia_, which was such an important feature in the private house of the Republic, is now either relegated to the garden front or the upper storey, where it is a delight to the family itself, and is no longer the public meeting-place. This is a difference entirely depending on a changed state of society. As in Florence, so it was in Milan, Venice, and other cities where Masonic lodges were established in the great church-building era. The nobles employed the builders whose hands were craving for work. And what palaces they built, and what a wealth of rich Gothic decoration they lavished on them! We are indebted for most of the Venetian Gothic palaces to the Buoni and Lombardi families, whose course we have traced in the chapter on Venice. The Renaissance buildings belong chiefly to the members of the Florentine Lodge, such as Sansovino and San Michele, who went to Venice in the sixteenth century.