ABSTRACT
The large number of Renaissance buildings are idealised church buildings, since people still wanted to prove how godly and righteous they were compared with others. The Renaissance could not have happened without developments in trade, a certain rather fresh enthusiasm for the mercantile economy and a certain questioning of the role of the Church, all in a day's work as far as our civilisation goes. A system of continually warring families, states and nations was hardly ideal. Despotism would provide material and artistic gains at the great expense of others, and it would take the second great writer of the Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne to write in a mordant humour on the delights of scepticism, so setting us on the road to the Enlightenment. The development of perspective certainly helped this sense of repose, and it began to be applied to the urban landscape in general.
