to James Snyder, "Receptivity, not originality, characterises the style of Antwerp painting, resulting in a hodgepodge of modes that are nearly impossible to sort out... With some effort, a few basic tendencies can be discerned which include selective eclecticism and archaism in terms of style, Mannerism in matters of taste, and specialization in subject matter." The compositions typically include architectural ruins. The architecture is initially Gothic but later Renaissance motifs become dominant. The "antique" style appears in paintings when hardly any built examples existed in the Low Countries, any more than ruins from Roman architecture. The Mannerist painters show very little evidence of having visited Italy (where Jan Gossaert had been in 1508–09), and their idea of alla antica style must be derived from Italian prints, and sometimes drawings. At this period painters or other artists were the usual designers of buildings, especially their ornament, and until a court case in Utrecht in 1543, master-masons were prohibited from doing so there by guild restrictions. The fantastic and exotic costumes many characters wear were already a feature of Early Netherlandish painting in the previous century, and the Biblical Magi and their retinues gave one of the most typical settings for this. They seem to derive partly from theatrical contexts, such as tableaux vivants in royal entries and other pageants, which artists were often asked to design. Another influence was the visit of the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos and his 700-strong retinue to the Ferrara stage of the Council of Florence in 1438. They were drawn by Pisanello and others, and the drawings were copied across Europe. The emperor's stylish hat, with a long pointed peak in front, seen on the Medal of John VIII Palaeologus, was especially popular, and versions appear in a good proportion of paintings of the Magi (as in some illustrated here). The large costumes were also useful in concealing deficiencies in the artists' figure drawing, which the complicated poses would otherwise have exposed. The artists liked "chromatic" colouring, as was becoming fashionable in Italy, and coleur changeante transitions between colours in fabrics, imitating silks (called cangiante in Italy). Compositional elements, especially figures, are often taken from outside sources, especially prints, but also drawings which appear to have been passed around within and perhaps between workshops:"Thus background groups are endlessly repeated, the same repoussoire figures fill in a variey of empty corners, and stock poses answer many