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6            The Decoration of Houses
bino, built by Luciano da Laurano about 1468, and the palace
of the Massimi alle Colonne in Rome, built by Baldassare Peruzzi
during the first half of the sixteenth century.
  The lives of the great Italian nobles were essentially open-air
lives: all was organized with a view to public pageants, cere-
monies and entertainments.      Domestic life was subordinated to
this spectacular existence, and instead of building private houses
in our sense, they built palaces, of which they set aside a por-
tion for the use of the family.  Every Italian palace has its mez-
zanin or private apartment; but this part of the building is now
seldom seen by travellers in Italy.  Not only is it usually inhab-
ited by the owners of the palace but, its decorations being simpler
than those of the piano nobile, or principal story, it is not thought
worthy of inspection.    As a matter of fact, the treatment of the
mezzanin was generally most beautiful, because most suitable
and while the Italian Renaissance palace can seldom serve as a
model for a modern private house, the decoration of the mezzanin
rooms is full of appropriate suggestion.
  In France and England, on the other hand, private life was
gradually, though slowly, developing along the lines it still fol-
lows in the present day.     It is necessary to bear in mind that
what we call modern civilization was a later growth in these two
countries than in Italy.  If this fact is insisted upon, it is only be-
cause it explains the relative unsuitability of French Renaissance
or Tudor and Elizabethan architecture to modern life.  In France,
for instance, it was not until the Fronde was subdued and Louis
XIV firmly established on the throne, that the elements which
compose what we call modern life really began to combine,      in
fact, it might be said that the feudalism of which the Fronde was
the lingering expression had its counterpart in the architecture of