The dawn of the Renaissance in France is known as the Louis XII. Style. It was the transitional period following the Italian expedition of Charles VIII. in 1497. The furniture becomes Classic in form, and the antique column again finds its place in the decoration, but the pilaster is preferred on account of its flat face being so well adapted for the carved arabesques so characteristic of this period. The detail is principally floral, human and animal forms being unimportant and expressionless. The furniture of Louis XII. and Frangois I. was not altogether derived from the Italian furniture. The style of the ornamentation was Italian; but its architecture remained purely French until the middle of the Sixteenth Century and, in some provinces, even later.

German Table, About 1500

"The Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century is divided into two distinct periods, those of Frangois I. and Henri II. The first is exuberant, bloated and prodigal. The second is more restrained, more linear, more geometrical, and more severe. The characteristic impression produced by the works of the Renaissance Style is that of vast wealth of varied fancy in the decorative motives and in the swarm of their details. Every piece of furniture is a whole world in which swarm real or fantastic beings mingled with garlands of flowers and fruits. It is the spectacle of a fat fecundity, better nourished than the style of the preceding period. Gothic carving was all on the same plane; its richness was more geometrical. In the Renaissance Style, the planes are innumerable. The nudity of its ridges and lines disappears. Supports, panels, cornices and frontons are all covered with ornamental details grouped into episodes, each of which has its own life and centre of action.

"The special characteristic of the style is the monumental facade of most of the pieces of furniture. They are Roman temples with Orders of architecture one above another: the Doric below, the Ionic in the middle, and the Corinthian on top. The whole is surmounted by a pediment, the apex of which is cut out, and in the hollow is placed a bust, or vase, or statuette. In the panels of the intercolumniations and in the uprights are niches, framed in an architectural motive which shelter figures of antique heroes or divinites. Sometimes there are round medallions, like windows, from which protrude curious heads with outstretched necks.

Plate V - Gothic Bedstead - Nuremberg Museum

"The most frequent motives of decoration of this style are Classic columns, pediments, broken pediments, heads in hollows, termed figures, garlands, pagan divinities, antique heroes, initial letters cut out and tied with strings of foliage, caryatides, grotesque faces, the F. of Frangois I. and the salamander, his attributes. In the painted or carved arabesques are mingled the animal and vegetable worlds; imaginary beings, half-animal, half-vegetable, are entwined with garlands and foliage.