The architecture of the Renaissance period, which succeeded the Gothic, corresponds again, in the spirit which animates it, to Greek architecture, which succeeded the Egyptian, for the Renaissance as the name implies was nothing other than an attempt to revive Classical antiquity.  Scholars writing in what they conceived to be a Classical style, sculptors modeling Pagan deities, and architects building according to their understanding of Vitruvian methods succeeded in producing works like, yet different from the originals they followed—­different because, animated by a spirit unknown to the ancients, they embodied a new ideal.

In all the productions of the early Renaissance, “that first transcendent springtide of the modern world,” there is the evanescent grace and beauty of youth which was seen to have pervaded Greek art, but it is a grace and beauty of a different sort.  The Greek artist sought to attain to a certain abstract perfection of type; to build a temple which should combine all the excellencies of every similar temple, to carve a figure, impersonal in the highest sense, which should embody every beauty.  The artist of the Renaissance on the other hand delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it.  Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul—­a sense of which was Christianity’s gift to Christendom—­he endeavored to portray that wherein a particular person is unique and singular.  Acutely conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it he made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality.  The history of Renaissance architecture, as Symonds has pointed out, is the history of a few eminent individuals, each one moulding and modifying the style in a manner peculiar to himself alone.  In the hands of Brunelleschi it was stern and powerful; Bramante made it chaste, elegant and graceful; Palladio made it formal, cold, symmetrical; while with Sansovino and Sammichele it became sumptuous and bombastic.

As the Renaissance ripened to decay its architecture assumed more and more the characteristics which distinguished that of Rome during the decadence.  In both there is the same lack of simplicity and sincerity, the same profusion of debased and meaningless ornament, and there is an increasing disposition to conceal and falsify the construction by surface decoration.

The final part of this second or modern architectural cycle lies still in the future.  It is not unreasonable to believe that the movement toward mysticism, of which modern theosophy is a phase and the spiritualization of science an episode, will flower out into an architecture which will be in some sort a reincarnation of and a return to the Gothic spirit, employing new materials, new methods, and developing new forms to show forth the spirit of the modern world, without violating ancient verities.

In studying these crucial periods in the history of European architecture it is possible to trace a gradual growth or unfolding as of a plant.  It is a fact fairly well established that the Greeks derived their architecture and ornament from Egypt; the Romans in turn borrowed from the Greeks; while a Gothic cathedral is a lineal descendant from a Roman basilica.