was the example of a rigorous and modest manner in an age which required above all things to be preserved from its own luxuriant waywardness of fancy.  It is hard to say how much of the work ascribed to Bramante in Northern Italy is genuine; most of it, at any rate, belongs to the manner of his youth.  The Church of S. Maria della Consolazione at Todi, the palace of the Cancelleria at Rome, and the unfinished cathedral of Pavia, enable us to comprehend the general character of this great architect’s refined and noble manner.  S. Peter’s, it may be said in passing, retains, in spite of all subsequent modifications, many essentially Bramantesque features—­especially in the distribution of the piers and rounded niches.

Bramante formed no school strictly so called, though his pupils, Cristoforo Rocchi and Ventura Vitoni, carried out his principles of building at Pavia and Pistoja.  Vitoni’s church of the Umilta in the latter city is a pure example of conscientious neo-Roman architecture.  It consists of a large octagon surmounted by a dome and preceded by a lofty vaulted atrium or vestibule.  The single round arch of this vestibule repeats the testudo of a Roman bath, and the decorative details are accurately reproduced from similar monuments.  Unfortunately, Giorgio Vasari, who was employed to finish the cupola, spoiled its effect by raising it upon an ugly attic; it is probable that the church, as designed by Vitoni, would have presented the appearance of a miniature Pantheon.  At Rome the influence of Bramante was propagated through Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Baldassare Peruzzi.  Raphael’s claim to consideration as an architect rests upon the Palazzi Vidoni and Pandolfini, the Cappella Chigi in S. Maria del Popolo, and the Villa Madama.  The last-named building, executed by Giulio Romano after Raphael’s design, is carried out in a style so forcible as to make us fancy that the pupil had a larger share in its creation than his teacher.  These works, however, sink into insignificance before the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, the masterpiece of Giulio’s genius.  This most noble of Italian pleasure-houses remains to show what the imagination of a poet-artist could recover from the splendour of old Rome and adapt to the use of his own age.  The vaults of the Thermae of Titus, with their cameos of stucco and frescoed arabesques, are here repeated on a scale and with an exuberance of invention that surpass the model.  Open loggie yield fair prospect over what were once trim gardens; spacious halls, adorned with frescoes in the vehement and gorgeous style of the Roman school, form a fit theatre for the grand parade-life of an Italian prince.  The whole is Pagan in its pride and sensuality, its prodigality of strength and insolence of freedom.  Having seen this palace, we do not wonder that the fame of Giulio flew across the Alps and lived upon the lips of Shakspere:  for in his master-work at Mantua he collected, as it were, and epitomised in one building all that enthralled the fancy of the Northern nations when they thought of Italy.