[16] Only in the most exaggerated German baroque were the vertical lines of the door-panels sometimes irregular.
[17] The inlaid doors of Houghton Hall, the seat of Sir Robert Walpole, were noted for their beauty and costliness. The price of each was £200.
[18] See a room in the Ministère de la Marine at Paris, where a subordinate door is cleverly treated in connection with one of more importance.
[19] As an example of the extent to which openings have come to be ignored as factors in the decorative composition of a room, it is curious to note that in Eastlake's well-known Hints on Household Taste no mention is made of doors, windows or fireplaces. Compare this point of view with that of the earlier decorators, from Vignola to Roubo and Ware.
[20] In Italy, where the walls were frescoed, the architectural composition over the mantel was also frequently painted. Examples of this are to be seen at the Villa Vertemati, near Chiavenna, and at the Villa Giacomelli, at Maser, near Treviso. This practice accounts for the fact that in many old architectural drawings of Italian interiors a blank wall-space is seen over the mantel.
[21] It is to be hoped that the recently published English translation of M. Émile Bourgeois's book on Louis XIV will do much to remove this prejudice.
[22] It is curious that those who criticize the ornateness of the Louis XIV style are often the warmest admirers of the French Renaissance, the style of all others most remarkable for its excessive use of ornament, exquisite in itself, but quite unrelated to structure and independent of general design.
[23] It is said to have been put at this height in order that the porcelain vases should be out of reach. See Daviler, "Cours d'Architecture."
[24] Examples are to be seen in several rooms of the hunting-lodge of the kings of Savoy, at Stupinigi, near Turin.
[25] In France, until the sixteenth century, the same word—plancher—was used to designate both floor and ceiling.