Nothing, for instance, taken by itself alone, can be more satisfactory than the facade of the Certosa at Pavia; but it is not, like the front of Chartres or Rheims or Amiens, a natural introduction to the inner sanctuary.

At the end of the Gothic period architecture had thus come to be conceived as the art of covering shapeless structures with a wealth of arabesques in marble, fresco, bronze, mosaic.
The revival of learning and a renewed interest in the antique withdrew the Italians for a short period from this false position.

With more or less of merit, successive builders, including those I have above mentioned, worked in a pure style: pure because it obeyed the laws of its own music, because it was intelligible and self-consistent, aiming at construction as the main end, subordinating decoration of richer luxuriance or of sterner severity to the prime purpose of the total scheme.

But this style was too much the plaything of particular minds to create a permanent tradition.

It varied in the several provinces of Italy, and mingled personal caprice with the effort to assume a classic garb.