While a new life impelled art in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, during the eleventh century, the appreciation of sculpture had already begun in Italy; and, at the end of the succeeding century, it had reached the lowest point of ignorance. But in the thirteenth century occurred the incident which was the occasion of a favorable reaction. Among the multitude of ancient marbles brought home from the East by the Pisan fleet at the time of rebuilding the cathedral of Pisa, was a bas-relief representing two subjects taken from the story of Phædra and Hippolytus. Being used as a decoration in the front of that noble building, young Nicholas observed, admired, and emulated its artistic worth. His successful endeavors led to a complete revolution in sculpture. In the fourteenth century, Andrew of Pisa continued the work of his predecessors, and was aided in keeping the art in an elevated path by Orgagna, and the brothers Agostino and Agnolo of Siena. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, under Donatello, and Ghiberti, sculpture had again attained a high degree of perfection. Other eminent proficients united with these great leaders, and carried forward the auspicious development into Germany where the artistic centre of sculpture, in the sixteenth century was fixed at Nuremberg, the residence of Adam Kraft, Peter Vischer, and his sons, Veit Stoss, and the great Albert Durer. Before the close of this century, however, the Italian renaissance became universally diffused in Germany, France, and Flanders, and superseded whatever of originality the native artists had until then preserved. Thenceforth, throughout the whole domain of the mediæval age, arabesques, festoons of flowers and fruit, branches, animals, and human figures, arranged in the most fantastic manner, took the place of all high art, and the excellence of sculpture was at an end. During the whole of the sixteenth century, and a great part of the seventeenth, from Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci to the death of Salvator Rosa, the fine arts underwent an irresistible and humiliating decline. Bronze casting early attained high excellence at Florence, and further north-west. The gates cast by Ghiberti, for the church of S. Giovanni, are perhaps the finest that ever came from human hands; and those of the cathedral of Pisa are excelled by none save these, which Michael Angelo pronounced to be fit for the portal of Heaven. In Mosaics and Gem engraving, also, the Italians greatly excelled previous to the seventeenth century, so fatal to the arts, literature, and morals of that fated land. All the beauties of Christian art faded away one after the other, and that same century witnessed the apostacy of painting, as well as sculpture, which, after having abjured its high and holy office of civil and religious instructress, sought to derive its inspirations from the Pagan Olympus.