End of the fifteenth century and beginning of the Renaissance - Andrea Palladio and his work - Inigo Jones - The introduction of the cabinet, development of the table and the chair - Alteration of the chimney-piece - Carved work in the Netherlands and Spain - The Tudor style in England, Hampton Court Palace - The Livery cupboard - Elizabethan work and famous examples - Silver furniture of late Renaissance.

IN a popular handbook on furniture it is unnecessary and undesirable to consider in detail the historical and social events which influenced the manners and customs, the architecture, and the domestic arts and industriesof different nations, but without some allusion to these contributory causes, it is difficult to appreciate the changes and variations, sometimes sudden and sometimes gradual, which affected the designs and styles of the furniture of successive periods.

Towards the latter end of the fifteenth century a great art movement commenced in Italy, spread to the Netherlands, Spain and Germany, which were then under the widespread sceptre of Charles V, and passed to France, whose king had married a daughter of the great Medici family, and afterwards, during the reign of Henry VIII, was introduced into England.

We must remember that the ancient or antique period had passed away with the decline of the vast Roman empire, and had been succeeded by a period of art known as Mediaeval, which embraced the Byzantine and Gothic styles of building, decoration and ornament. The Gothic, with its different divisions and varieties, was now to give way to the new movement, termed Renaissance or re-birth, which, commencing in the fifteenth found expression and development in the sixteenth century. Every art student knows what an extraordinary period was the sixteenth century for the production and encouragement of great men in art, painters, sculptors, architects, designers and workers in gold, silver and bronze, potters and enamellers, weavers of beautiful textiles, and last, though by no means least, makers, carvers, and inlayers of ornamental woodwork and furniture.

The illustration which I am able to give of four panels of carved oak from the South Kensington collection, shows four different styles of wood-carving of this period of transition, and is useful to assist one in determining the kind of enrichment of late fifteenth century ornament.

The woodwork of the Mediaeval time was limited to the spare equipment of the feudal castle and the limited furnishing of the monastic house or church. The castle was now giving way to the palace or mansion, the use of gunpowder and firearms had contributed materially to change the character of the noble's residence; the rich burgess and merchant were everywhere asserting the power and influence of successful trade and enterprise, the arts of war were making way for the arts of peace, and the people of the capitals and centres of civilization in the different countries of Europe, were beginning to decorate and furnish their homes according to some idea of comfort and luxury.

ENGLISH, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

FLEMISH, SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

FRENCH, SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

GERMAN, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

ITALIAN, SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

EXAMPLES OF OAK CARVING.

The general scheme of the leaders of the new movement, chief of whom were Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, was to abolish the Gothic principles of their predecessors, and to re-establish the simplicity and purity of the earlier Greek and Roman styles.

As an architect of the sixteenth century Andrea Palladio probably did more than any other man to give expression to the new movement in the buildings of his time, and the Italian palaces designed by him were the elaboration of the types of temples and city gates of ancient Rome. He appears to have been fascinated by the fine proportions, the stateliness and dignity of these ancient piles, and the school of architecture which came in after years to be known as Palladian, had a lasting influence upon the architecture of other nations. Inigo Jones, our great seventeenth-century designer, may be said to have built Whitehall Palace under the inspiration of Palladio's teaching and the Renaissance influence.

Furniture and woodwork of the period were affected as a natural consequence of the alteration in the elevation and plan, in the style and ornament of the building itself, and necessarily the panellings and mouldings, the cornices, enrichments, and all the equipment and furnishings, to a great extent followed the lines and spirit of the exterior.

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE MIRROR FRAME IN CARVED WALNUT LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE CASSONE IN CARVED WALNUT LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The cabinet as a piece of furniture may be said to have first made its appearance in the sixteenth century; the chest, the credence, the buffet had been in existence much earlier, but not the cabinet, and it now took the form of a miniature gateway or part of a temple or a palace, which served as the model of the sixteenth-century designer. The interior decorations of some of these cabinets were arranged with pilasters, columns, and arcaded ornament, like the interiors of the palaces themselves, and not infrequently we find the floor or platform of these interior recesses inlaid with small squares or geometrical patterns in perspective, to imitate the floor of the vestibule of the palace from which the scheme of design was adopted.