By the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066 a measure of civilization had been achieved. A great love of color developed with the age of chivalry. The period of the Crusades (seven attempts during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the infidels) brought the knights of Western Europe into contact with the developed arts of Sicily and the far more luxurious life of their Saracen enemies, and the returning crusaders brought back great quantities of the rich and colorful fabrics of the East.
That tremendous out-flowering of the human spirit which we call the Renaissance (French for rebirth) started in Italy in the fourteenth century; it grew there in full vigor in the fifteenth, attained to its maturest powers in the sixteenth, and sank to its decline in the seventeenth. The whole era was a time of great achievement. The New World was discovered and explored, learning was revived and extended, international trade was developed, and masterpieces were created in the arts, which still stand among the greatest monuments of human genius.
The ideas and decorative practice of the Italian Renaissance quickly spread to the west, where they overcame or fused with the existing Gothic, resulted in the Renaissance styles of Spain, France, Flanders, Holland, and England, and started the long course of development which has created the immensely rich heritage possessed by lovers of furniture today. In studying the decoration of this first period, we must remember that the construction of rooms adapted to the comfort, privacy, and intimacy of modern life was an eighteenth century development. Life was lived in the public eye and in rooms of state. The apartments of the palaces were large, the ceilings high, and the furniture sparse and designed for its decorative value rather than for use and comfort.
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
It is customary to divide this era into three periods; the Early Renaissance, characterized by a rich simplicity and a dignity almost austere; the High Renaissance, by a showy but restrained magnificence; and the Late Renaissance, by a baroque magnificence over-ornate and unrestrained.
During the first period, walls were chiefly in rough plaster, bare save for tapestries or panels of damask or brocade, or finished with a smooth coat decorated with colored frescoes; ceilings were largely in dark woods, cross-beamed, and with the heavy beams and corbels ornamented in color; and floors were of stone, tile, and marble. There was some use of oriental rugs, and a free use of rich decorative textiles.
During the high or middle period (about 1500-1550) many of the rooms were rich with pattern and color. Walls were in colored marbles, or covered with frescoes and gilding, or with gorgeous brocades, Genoese velvets and tooled and gilded leather; ceilings frescoed and gilded; floors paved with many-colored patterns in gleaming marble.
Furniture of the period was straight-lined, rectangular, and of dark woods. Carving, in low relief and in the round, always was employed with a fine sense of the value of contrast with plain spaces. Gesso ornament, gilding, and painting were much employed, and the panels of chests and other pieces often were decorated by the greatest artists.
Chairs of the period were of (a) the rectangular type, with or without arms, with high or low back, and with or without upholstery; (b) the curule, a sort of four-legged camp stool with back, sometimes of metal and with fabric seat; and the X-type, adapted from ancient Greece and Rome, called in Italy Dante and Savonarola chairs. These chairs of wood or metal often were made to fold, and later became popular in England.
Tables included the single-slab refectory type; draw tables of the same construction used today; pedestal tables with round, square, hexagonal, and octagonal tops; and a variety of writing tables with a front box or drawer section which could be lifted for writing. The larger tables were supported by heavy turned legs with stretchers near the floor, or by trussed or columned end supports connected by a stretcher, often arcaded.