study and imitation of Roman architecture should lead to an increasingly
literal rendering of classic details and a closer copying of antique
compositions. Toward the close of the fifteenth century the symptoms
began to multiply of the approaching reign of formal classicism.
Correctness in the reproduction of old Roman forms came in time to be
esteemed as one of the chief of architectural virtues, and in the
following period the orders became the principal resource of the
architect. During the so-called Cinquecento, that is, from the close of
the fifteenth century to nearly or quite 1550, architecture still
retained much of the freedom and refinement of the Quattrocento. There
was meanwhile a notable advance in dignity and amplitude of design,
especially in the internal distribution of buildings. Externally the
orders were freely used as subordinate features in the decoration of
doors and windows, and in court arcades of the Roman type. The
lantern-crowned dome upon a high drum was developed into one of the
noblest of architectural forms. Great attention was bestowed upon all
subordinate features; doors and windows were treated with frames and
pediments of extreme elegance and refinement; all the cornices and
mouldings were proportioned and profiled with the utmost care, and the
balustrade was elaborated into a feature at once useful and highly
ornate. Interior decoration was even more splendid than before, if
somewhat less delicate and subtle; relief enrichments in stucco were
used with admirable effect, and the greatest artists exercised their
talents in the painting of vaults and ceilings, as in P. del Té at
Mantua, by _Giulio Romano_ (1492-1546), and the Sistine Chapel at Rome,
by Michael Angelo. This period is distinguished by an exceptional number
of great architects and buildings. It was ushered in by _Bramante
Lazzari_, of Urbino (1444-1514), and closed during the career of
_Michael Angelo Buonarotti_ (1475-1564); two names worthy to rank with
that of Brunelleschi. Inferior only to these in architectural genius
were _Raphael_ (1483-1520), _Baldassare Peruzzi_ (1481-1536), _Antonio
da San Gallo the Younger_ (1485-1546), and _G. Barozzi da Vignola_
(1507-1572), in Rome; _Giacopo Tatti Sansovino_ (1479-1570), in Venice,
and others almost equally illustrious. This period witnessed the
erection of an extraordinary series of palaces, villas, and churches,
the beginning and much of the construction of St. Peter’s at Rome, and a
complete transformation in the aspect of that city.
+BRAMANTE’S WORKS.+ While precise time limits cannot be set to
architectural styles, it is not irrational to date this period from the
maturing of Bramante’s genius. While his earlier works in Milan belong
to the Quattrocento (S. M. delle Grazie, the sacristy of San Satiro, the
extension of the Great Hospital), his later designs show the classic
tendency very clearly. The charming +Tempietto+ in the court of
S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome, a circular temple-like chapel (1502), is
composed of purely classic elements. In the +P. Giraud+ (Fig. 166) and
the great +Cancelleria+ Palace, pilasters appear in the external
composition, and all the details of doors and windows betray the results
of classic study, as well as the refined taste of their designer.[24]
The beautiful courtyard of the Cancelleria combines the Florentine
system of arches on columns with the Roman system of superposed arcades
independent of the court wall. In 1506 Bramante began the rebuilding of
St. Peter’s for Julius II. (see p. 294) and the construction of a new
and imposing papal palace adjoining it on the Vatican hill. Of this
colossal group of edifices, commonly known as the +Vatican+, he executed
the greater Belvedere court (afterward divided in two by the Library and
the Braccio Nuovo), the lesser octagonal court of the Belvedere, and the
court of San Damaso, with its arcades afterward frescoed by Raphael and
his school. Besides these, the cloister of S. M. della Pace, and many
other works in and out of Rome, reveal the impress of Bramante’s genius,
alike in their admirable plans and in the harmony and beauty of their
details.
[Footnote 24: See Appendix C.]
[Illustration: FIG. 166.--FAÇADE OF THE GIRAUD PALACE, ROME.]
+FLORENTINE PALACES.+ The P. Riccardi long remained the accepted type of
palace in Florence. As we have seen, it was imitated in the Strozzi
palace, as late as 1489, with greater perfection of detail, but with no
radical change of conception. In the +P. Gondi+, however, begun in the
following year by _Giuliano da San Gallo_ (1445-1516), a more pronounced
classic spirit appears, especially in the court and the interior design.
Early in the 16th century classic columns and pediments began to be used
as decorations for doors and windows; the rustication was confined to
basements and corner-quoins, and niches, loggias, and porches gave
variety of light and shade to the façades (+P. Bartolini+, by _Baccio
d’Agnolo_; +P. Larderel+, 1515, by _Dosio_; +P. Guadagni+, by _Cronaca_;
+P. Pandolfini+, 1518, attributed to Raphael). In the +P. Serristori+,
by Baccio d’Agnolo (1510), pilasters were applied to the composition of
the façade, but this example was not often followed in Florence.
+ROMAN PALACES.+ These followed a different type. They were usually of
great size, and built around ample courts with arcades of classic model
in two or three stories. The broad street façade in three stories with
an attic or mezzanine was crowned with a rich cornice. The orders were
sparingly used externally, and effect was sought principally in the
careful proportioning of the stories, in the form and distribution of
the square-headed and arched openings, and in the design of mouldings,
string-courses, cornices, and other details. The _piano nobile_, or
first story above the basement, was given up to suites of sumptuous
reception-rooms and halls, with magnificent ceilings and frescoes by the
great painters of the day, while antique statues and reliefs adorned the
courts, vestibules, and niches of these princely dwellings. The
+Massimi+ palace, by Peruzzi, is an interesting example of this type.
The Vatican, Cancelleria, and Giraud palaces have already been
mentioned; other notable palaces are the Palma (1506) and Sacchetti
(1540), by A. da San Gallo the Younger; the +Farnesina+, by Peruzzi,
with celebrated fresco decorations designed by Raphael; and the Lante
(1520) and Altemps (1530), by Peruzzi. But the noblest creation of this
period was the
+FARNESE PALACE+, by many esteemed the finest in Italy. It was begun in
1530 for Alex. Farnese (Paul III.) by A. da San Gallo the Younger, with
Vignola’s collaboration. The simple but admirable plan is shown in Fig.
167, and the courtyard, the most imposing in Italy, in Fig. 168. The
exterior is monotonous, but the noble cornice by Michael Angelo
measurably redeems this defect. The fine vaulted columnar entrance
vestibule, the court and the _salons_, make up an _ensemble_ worthy of
the great architects who designed it. The loggia toward the river was
added by _G. della Porta_ in 1580.
[Illustration: FIG. 167.--PLAN OF FARNESE PALACE.]
+VILLAS.+ The Italian villa of this pleasure-loving period afforded full
scope for the most playful fancies of the architect, decorator, and
landscape gardener. It comprised usually a dwelling, a _casino_ or
amusement-house, and many minor edifices, summer-houses, arcades, etc.,
disposed in extensive grounds laid out with terraces, cascades, and
shaded alleys. The style was graceful, sometimes trivial, but almost
always pleasing, making free use of stucco enrichments, both internally
and externally, with abundance of gilding and frescoing. The +Villa
Madama+ (1516), by Raphael, with stucco-decorations by Giulio Romano,
though incomplete and now dilapidated, is a noted example of the style.
More complete, the +Villa of Pope Julius+, by Vignola (1550), belongs by
its purity of style to this period; its façade well exemplifies the
simplicity, dignity, and fine proportions of this master’s work. In
addition to these Roman villas may be mentioned the +V. Medici+ (1540,
by _Annibale Lippi_; now the French Academy of Rome); the +Casino del
Papa+ in the Vatican Gardens, by _Pirro Ligorio_ (1560); the +V. Lante+,
near Viterbo, and the +V. d’Este+, at Tivoli, as displaying among almost
countless others the Italian skill in combining architecture and
gardening.
[Illustration: FIG. 168.--ANGLE OF COURT OF FARNESE PALACE, ROME.]
+CHURCHES AND CHAPELS.+ This period witnessed the building of a few
churches of the first rank, but it was especially prolific in memorial,
votive, and sepulchral chapels added to churches already existing, like
the +Chigi Chapel+ of S. M. del Popolo, by Raphael. The earlier churches
of this period generally followed antecedent types, with the dome as the
central feature dominating a cruciform plan, and simple, unostentatious
and sometimes uninteresting exteriors. Among them may be mentioned: at
Pistoia, S. M. del Letto and +S. M. dell’ Umiltà+, the latter a fine
domical rotunda by _Ventura Vitoni_ (1509), with an imposing vestibule;
at Venice, +S. Salvatore+, by _Tullio Lombardo_ (1530), an admirable
edifice with alternating domical and barrel-vaulted bays; +S. Georgio
dei Grechi+ (1536), by _Sansovino_, and S. M. Formosa; at Todi, the
+Madonna della Consolazione+ (1510), by _Cola da Caprarola_, a charming
design with a high dome and four apses; at Montefiascone, the +Madonna
delle Grazie+, by _Sammichele_ (1523), besides several churches at
Bologna, Ferrara, Prato, Sienna, and Rome of almost or quite equal
interest. In these churches one may trace the development of the dome as
an external feature, while in +S. Biagio+, at Montepulciano, the effort
was made by _Ant. da San Gallo the Elder_ to combine with it the
contrasting lines of two campaniles, of which, however, but one was
completed.
[Illustration: FIG. 169.--ORIGINAL PLAN OF ST. PETER’S, ROME.]
+ST. PETER’S.+ The culmination of Renaissance church architecture was
reached in +St. Peter’s+, at Rome. The original project of Nicholas V.
having lapsed with his death, it was the intention of Julius II. to
erect on the same site a stupendous mausoleum over the monument he had
ordered of Michael Angelo. The design of Bramante, who began its
erection in 1506, comprised a Greek cross with apsidal arms, the four
angles occupied by domical chapels and loggias within a square outline
(Fig. 169). The too hasty execution of this noble design led to the
collapse of two of the arches under the dome, and to long delays after
Bramante’s death in 1514. Raphael, Giuliano da San Gallo, Peruzzi, and
A. da San Gallo the Younger successively supervised the works under the
popes from Leo X. to Paul III., and devised a vast number of plans for
its completion. Most of these involved fundamental alterations of the
original scheme, and were motived by the abandonment of the proposed
monument of Julius II.; a church, and not a mausoleum, being in
consequence required. In 1546 Michael Angelo was assigned by Paul III.
to the works, and gave final form to the general design in a simplified
version of Bramante’s plan with more massive supports, a square east
front with a portico for the chief entrance, and the unrivalled +Dome+,
which is its most striking feature. This dome, slightly altered and
improved in curvature by della Porta after M. Angelo’s death in 1564,
was completed by _D. Fontana_ in 1604. It is the most majestic creation
of the Renaissance, and one of the greatest architectural conceptions of
all history. It measures 140 feet in internal diameter, and with its two
shells rises from a lofty drum, buttressed by coupled Corinthian
columns, to a height of 405 feet to the top of the lantern. The church,
as left by Michael Angelo, was harmonious in its proportions, though the
single order used internally and externally dwarfed by its colossal
scale the vast dimensions of the edifice. Unfortunately in 1606 _C.
Maderna_ was employed by Paul V. to lengthen the nave by two bays,
destroying the proportions of the whole, and hiding the dome from view
on a near approach. The present tasteless façade was Maderna’s work. The
splendid atrium or portico added (1629-67), by _Bernini_, as an
approach, mitigates but does not cure the ugliness and pettiness of this
front.
[Illustration: FIG. 170.--PLAN OF ST. PETER’S, ROME,
AS NOW STANDING.
The portion below the line A, B, and the side chapels C, D, were
added by Maderna. The remainder represents Michael Angelo’s plan.]
St. Peter’s as thus completed (Fig. 170) is the largest church in
existence, and in many respects is architecturally worthy of its
pre-eminence. The central aisle, nearly 600 feet long, with its
stupendous panelled and gilded vault, 83 feet in span, the vast central
area and the majestic dome, belong to a conception unsurpassed in
majestic simplicity and effectiveness. The construction is almost
excessively massive, but admirably disposed. On the other hand the nave
is too long, and the details not only lack originality and interest, but
are also too large and coarse in scale, dwarfing the whole edifice. The
interior (Fig. 171) is wanting in the sobriety of color that befits so
stately a design; it suggests rather a pagan temple than a Christian
basilica. These faults reveal the decline of taste which had already set
in before Michael Angelo took charge of the work, and which appears even
in the works of that master.
+THE PERIOD OF FORMAL CLASSICISM.+ With the middle of the 16th century
the classic orders began to dominate all architectural design. While
Vignola, who wrote a treatise upon the orders, employed them with
unfailing refinement and judgment, his contemporaries showed less
discernment and taste, making of them an end rather than a means. Too
often mere classical correctness was substituted for the fundamental
qualities of original invention and intrinsic beauty of composition. The
innovation of colossal orders extending through several stories, while
it gave to exterior designs a certain grandeur of scale, tended to
coarseness and even vulgarity of detail. Sculpture and ornament began to
lose their refinement; and while street-architecture gained in
monumental scale, and public squares received a more stately adornment
than ever before, the street-façades individually were too often bare
and uninteresting in their correct formality. In the interiors of
churches and large halls there appears a struggle between a cold and
dignified simplicity and a growing tendency toward pretentious sham. But
these pernicious tendencies did not fully mature till the latter part of
the century, and the half-century after 1540 or 1550 was prolific of
notable works in both ecclesiastical and secular architecture. The names
of Michael Angelo and Vignola, whose careers began in the preceding
period; of Palladio and della Porta (1541-1604) in Rome; of Sammichele
and Sansovino in Verona and Venice, and of Galeazzo Alessi in Genoa,
stand high in the ranks of architectural merit.
[Illustration: FIG. 171.--INTERIOR OF ST. PETER’S, ROME.]
+CHURCHES.+ The type established by St. Peter’s was widely imitated
throughout Italy. The churches in which a Greek or Latin cross is
dominated by a high dome rising from a drum and terminating in a
lantern, and is treated both internally and externally with Roman
Corinthian pilasters and arches, are almost numberless. Among the best
churches of this type is the +Gesù+ at Rome, by Vignola (1568), with a
highly ornate interior of excellent proportions and a less interesting
exterior, the façade adorned with two stories of orders and great
flanking volutes over the sides (see p. 277). Two churches at Venice, by
_Palladio_--+S. Giorgio Maggiore+ (1560; façade by _Scamozzi_, 1575) and
the +Redentore+--offer a strong contrast to the Gesù, in their cold and
almost bare but pure and correct design. An imitation of Bramante’s plan
for St. Peter’s appears in +S. M. di Carignano+, at Genoa, by _Galeazzo
Alessi_ (1500-72), begun 1552, a fine structure, though inferior in
scale and detail to its original. Besides these and other important
churches there were many large domical chapels of great splendor added
to earlier churches; of these the +Chapel of Sixtus V.+ in S. M.
Maggiore, at Rome, by _D. Fontana_ (1543-1607), is an excellent example.
+PALACES: ROME.+ The palaces on the Capitoline Hill, built at different
dates (1540-1644) from designs by Michael Angelo, illustrate the palace
architecture of this period, and the imposing effect of a single
colossal order running through two stories. This treatment, though well
adapted to produce monumental effects in large squares, was dangerous in
its bareness and heaviness of scale, and was better suited for buildings
of vast dimensions than for ordinary street-façades. In other Roman
palaces of this time the traditions of the preceding period still
prevailed, as in the +Sapienza+ (University), by della Porta (1575),
which has a dignified court and a façade of great refinement without
columns or pilasters. The +Papal palaces+ built by Domenico Fontana on
the Lateran, Quirinal, and Vatican hills, between 1574 and 1590,
externally copying the style of the Farnese, show a similar return to
earlier models, but are less pure and refined in detail than the
Sapienza. The great pentagonal +Palace of Caprarola+, near Rome, by
Vignola, is perhaps the most successful and imposing production of the
Roman classic school.
+VERONA.+ Outside of Rome, palace-building took on various local and
provincial phases of style, of which the most important were the closely
related styles of Verona, Venice, and Vicenza. _Michele Sammichele_
(1484-1549), who built in Verona the +Bevilacqua+, +Canossa+, +Pompei+,
and +Verzi+ palaces and the four chief city gates, and in Venice the
+P. Grimani+, his masterpiece (1550), was a designer of great
originality and power. He introduced into his military architecture, as
in the gates of Verona, the use of rusticated orders, which he treated
with skill and taste. The idea was copied by later architects and
applied, with doubtful propriety, to palace-façades; though Ammanati’s
garden-façade for the Pitti palace, in Florence (cir. 1560), is an
impressive and successful design.
+VENICE.+ Into the development of the maturing classic style _Giacopo
Tatti Sansovino_ (1477-1570) introduced in his Venetian buildings new
elements of splendor. Coupled columns between arches themselves
supported on columns, and a profusion of figure sculpture, gave to his
palace-façades a hitherto unknown magnificence of effect, as in the
+Library of St. Mark+ (now the Royal Palace, Fig. 172), and the
+Cornaro+ palace (P. Corner de Cà Grande), both dating from about
1530-40. So strongly did he impress upon Venice these ornate and
sumptuous variations on classic themes, that later architects adhered,
in a very debased period, to the main features and spirit of his work.
[Illustration: FIG. 172.--LIBRARY OF ST. MARK, VENICE.]
+VICENZA.+ Of _Palladio’s_ churches in Venice we have already spoken;
his palaces are mainly to be found in his native city, Vicenza. In these
structures he displayed great fertility of invention and a profound
familiarity with the classic orders, but the degenerate taste of the
Baroque period already begins to show itself in his work. There is far
less of architectural propriety and grace in these pretentious palaces,
with their colossal orders and their affectation of grandeur, than in
the designs of Vignola or Sammichele. Wood and plaster, used to mimic
stone, indicate the approaching reign of sham in all design
(+P. Barbarano+, 1570; +Chieregati+, 1560; +Tiene+, +Valmarano+, 1556;
+Villa Capra+). His masterpiece is the two-storied arcade about the
mediæval +Basilica+, in which the arches are supported on a minor order
between engaged columns serving as buttresses. This treatment has in
consequence ever since been known as the _Palladian Motive_.
+GENOA.+ During the second half of the sixteenth century a remarkable
series of palaces was erected in Genoa, especially notable for their
great courts and imposing staircases. These last were given unusual
prominence owing to differences of level in the courts, arising from the
slope of their sites on the hillside. Many of these palaces were by
Galeazzo Alessi (1502-72); others by architects of lesser note; but
nearly all characterized by their effective planning, fine stairs and
loggias, and strong and dignified, if sometimes uninteresting, detail
(+P. Balbi+, +Brignole+, +Cambiasi+, +Doria-Tursi+ [or Municipio],
+Durazzo+ [or Reale], +Pallavicini+, and +University+).
[Illustration: FIG. 173.--INTERIOR OF SAN SEVERO, NAPLES.]
+THE BAROQUE STYLE.+ A reaction from the cold _classicismo_ of the late
sixteenth century showed itself in the following period, in the lawless
and vulgar extravagances of the so-called _Baroque_ style. The wealthy
Jesuit order was a notorious contributor to the debasement of
architectural taste. Most of the Jesuit churches and many others not
belonging to the order, but following its pernicious example, are
monuments of bad taste and pretentious sham. Broken and contorted
pediments, huge scrolls, heavy mouldings, ill-applied sculpture in
exaggerated attitudes, and a general disregard for architectural
propriety characterized this period, especially in its church
architecture, to whose style the name _Jesuit_ is often applied. Sham
marble and heavy and excessive gilding were universal (Fig. 173). _C.
Maderna_ (1556-1629), _Lorenzo Bernini_ (1589-1680), and _F. Borromini_
(1599-1667) were the worst offenders of the period, though Bernini was
an artist of undoubted ability, as proved by his colonnades or atrium in
front of St. Peter’s. There were, however, architects of purer taste
whose works even in that debased age were worthy of admiration.
[Illustration: FIG. 174.--CHURCH OF S. M. DELLA SALUTE, VENICE.]
+BAROQUE CHURCHES.+ The Baroque style prevailed in church architecture
for almost two centuries. The majority of the churches present varieties
of the cruciform plan crowned by a high dome which is usually the best
part of the design. Everywhere else the vices of the period appear in
these churches, especially in their façades and internal decoration.
+S. M. della Vittoria+, by Maderna, and +Sta. Agnese+, by Borromini,
both at Rome, are examples of the style. Naples is particularly full of
Baroque churches (Fig. 173), a few of which, like the +Gesù Nuovo+
(1584), are dignified and creditable designs. The domical church of
+S. M. della Salute+, at Venice (1631), by Longhena, is also a majestic
edifice in excellent style (Fig. 174), and here and there other churches
offer exceptions to the prevalent baseness of architecture. Particularly
objectionable was the wholesale disfigurement of existing monuments by
ruthless remodelling, as in S. John Lateran, at Rome, the cathedrals of
Ferrara and Ravenna, and many others.
+PALACES.+ These were generally superior to the churches, and not
infrequently impressive and dignified structures. The two best examples
in Rome are the +P. Borghese+, by _Martino Lunghi the Elder_ (1590),
with a fine court arcade on coupled Doric and Ionic columns, and the
+P. Barberini+, by Maderna and Borromini, with an elliptical staircase
by Bernini, one of the few palaces in Italy with projecting lateral
wings. In Venice, Longhena, in the +Rezzonico+ and +Pesaro+ palaces
(1650-80), showed his freedom from the mannerisms of the age by
reproducing successfully the ornate but dignified style of Sansovino
(see p. 301). At Naples D. Fontana, whose works overlap the Baroque
period, produced in the +Royal Palace+ (1600) and the +Royal Museum+
(1586-1615) designs of considerable dignity, in some respects superior
to his papal residences in Rome. In suburban villas, like the +Albani+
and +Borghese+ villas near Rome, the ostentatious style of the Decline
found free and congenial expression.
+LATER MONUMENTS.+ In the few eighteenth-century buildings which are
worthy of mention there is noticeable a reaction from the extravagances
of the seventeenth century, shown in the dignified correctness of the
exteriors and the somewhat frigid splendor of the interiors. The most
notable work of this period is the +Royal Palace+ at +Caserta+, by _Van
Vitelli_ (1752), an architect of considerable taste and inventiveness,
considering his time. This great palace, 800 feet square, encloses four
fine courts, and is especially remarkable for the simple if monotonous
dignity of the well proportioned exterior and the effective planning of
its three octagonal vestibules, its ornate chapel and noble staircase.
Staircases, indeed, were among the most successful features of late
Italian architecture, as in the +Scala Regia+ of the Vatican, and in the
Corsini, Braschi, and Barberini palaces at Rome, the Royal Palace at
Naples, etc.
In church architecture the +east front+ of +S. John Lateran+ in Rome, by
_Galilei_ (1734), and the whole +exterior+ of +S. M. Maggiore+, by
_Ferd. Fuga_ (1743), are noteworthy designs: the former an especially
powerful conception, combining a colossal order with two smaller orders
in superposed _loggie_, but marred by the excessive scale of the statues
which crown it. The +Fountain+ of +Trevi+, conceived in much the same
spirit (1735, by _Niccola Salvi_), is a striking piece of decorative
architecture. The Sacristy of St. Peter’s, by _Marchionne_ (1775), also
deserves mention as a monumental and not uninteresting work. In the
early years of the present century the +Braccio Nuovo+ of the Vatican,
by _Stern_, the imposing church of +S. Francesco di Paola+ at Naples, by
_Bianchi_, designed in partial imitation of the Pantheon, and the great
+S. Carlo Theatre+ at Naples, show the same coldly classical spirit, not
wholly without merit, but lacking in true originality and freedom of
conception.
+CAMPANILES.+ The +campaniles+ of the Renaissance and Decline deserve at
least passing reference, though they are neither numerous nor often of
conspicuous interest. That of the +Campidoglio+ (Capitol) at Rome, by
Martino Lunghi, is a good example of the classical type. Venetia
possesses a number of graceful and lofty bell-towers, generally of brick
with marble bell-stages, of which the upper part of the +Campanile+ of
+St. Mark+ and the tower of S. Giorgio Maggiore are the finest examples.
The Decline attained what the early Renaissance aimed at--the revival of
Roman forms. But it was no longer a Renaissance; it was a decrepit and
unimaginative art, held in the fetters of a servile imitation, copying
the letter rather than the spirit of antique design. It was the mistaken
and abject worship of precedent which started architecture upon its
downward path and led to the atrocious products of the seventeenth
century.
+MONUMENTS+ (mainly in addition to those mentioned in the text).
15TH CENTURY--FLORENCE: Foundling Hospital (Innocenti), 1421; Old
Sacristy and Cloister S. Lorenzo; P. Quaratesi, 1440; cloisters at
Sta. Croce and Certosa, all by Brunelleschi; façade S. M. Novella,
by Alberti, 1456; Badia at Fiesole, from designs of Brunelleschi,
1462; Court of P. Vecchio, by Michelozzi, 1464 (altered and
enriched, 1565); P. Guadagni, by Cronaca, 1490; Hall of 500 in
P. Vecchio, by same, 1495.--VENICE: S. Zaccaria, by Martino
Lombardo, 1457-1515; S. Michele, by Moro Lombardo, 1466; S. M. del
Orto, 1473; S. Giovanni Crisostomo, by Moro Lombardo, atrium of
S. Giovanni Evangelista, Procurazie Vecchie, all 1481; Scuola di
S. Marco, by Martino Lombardo, 1490; P. Dario;
P. Corner-Spinelli.--FERRARA: P. Schifanoja, 1469; P. Scrofa or
Costabili, 1485; S. M. in Vado, P. dei Diamanti, P. Bevilacqua,
S. Francesco, S. Benedetto, S. Cristoforo, all 1490-1500.--MILAN:
Ospedale Grande (or Maggiore), begun 1457 by Filarete, extended by
Bramante, cir. 1480-90 (great court by Richini, 17th century);
S. M. delle Grazie, E. end, Sacristy of S. Satiro, S. M. presso
S. Celso, all by Bramante, 1477-1499.--ROME: S. Pietro in
Montorio, 1472; S. M. del Popolo, 1475?; Sistine Chapel of
Vatican, 1475; S. Agostino, 1483.--SIENNA: Loggia del Papa and
P. Nerucci, 1460; P. del Governo, 1469-1500; P. Spannocchi, 1470;
Sta. Catarina, 1490, by di Bastiano and Federighi, church later by
Peruzzi; Library in cathedral by L. Marina, 1497; Oratory of
S. Bernardino, by Turrapili, 1496.--PIENZA: Cathedral, Bishop’s
Palace (Vescovado), P. Pubblico, all cir. 1460, by B. di Lorenzo
(or Rosselini?). ELSEWHERE (in chronological order): Arch of
Alphonso, Naples, 1443, by P. di Martino; Oratory S. Bernardino,
Perugia, by di Duccio, 1461; Church over Casa-Santa, Loreto,
1465-1526; P. del Consiglio at Verona, by Fra Giocondo, 1476;
Capella Colleoni, Bergamo, 1476; S. M. in Organo, Verona, 1481;
Porta Capuana, Naples, by Giul. da Majano, 1484; Madonna della
Croce, Crema, by B. Battagli, 1490-1556; Madonna di Campagna and
S. Sisto, Piacenza, both 1492-1511; P. Bevilacqua, Bologna, by
Nardi, 1492 (?); P. Gravina, Naples; P. Fava, Bologna;
P. Pretorio, Lucca; S. M. dei Miracoli Brescia; all at close of
15th century.
16TH CENTURY--ROME: P. Sora, 1501; S. M. della Pace and cloister,
1504, both by Bramante (façade of church by P. da Cortona, 17th
century); S. M. di Loreto, 1507, by A. da San Gallo the Elder;
P. Vidoni, by Raphael; P. Lante, 1520; Vigna Papa Giulio, 1534, by
Peruzzi; P. dei Conservatori, 1540, and P. del Senatore, 1563
(both on Capitol), by M. Angelo, Vignola, and della Porta; Sistine
Chapel in S. M. Maggiore, 1590; S. Andrea della Valle, 1591, by
Olivieri (façade, 1670, by Rainaldi).--FLORENCE: Medici Chapel of
S. Lorenzo, new sacristy of same, and Laurentian Library, all by
M. Angelo, 1529-40; Mercato Nuovo, 1547, by B. Tasso; P. degli
Uffizi, 1560-70, by Vasari; P. Giugni, 1560-8.--VENICE:
P. Camerlinghi, 1525, by Bergamasco; S. Francesco della Vigna, by
Sansovino, 1539, façade by Palladio, 1568; Zecca or Mint, 1536,
and Loggetta of Campanile, 1540, by Sansovino[25], Procurazie
Nuove, 1584, by Scamozzi.--VERONA: Capella Pellegrini in
S. Bernardino, 1514; City Gates, by Sammichele, 1530-40 (Porte
Nuova, Stuppa, S. Zeno, S. Giorgio).--VICENZA: P. Porto, 1552;
Teatro Olimpico, 1580; both by Palladio.--GENOA: P. Andrea Doria,
by Montorsoli, 1529; P. Ducale, by Pennone, 1550; P. Lercari,
P. Spinola, P. Sauli, P. Marcello Durazzo, all by Gal. Alessi,
cir. 1550; Sta. Annunziata, 1587, by della Porta; Loggia dei
Banchi, end of 16th century.--ELSEWHERE (in chronological order).
P. Roverella, Ferrara, 1508; P. del Magnifico, Sienna, 1508, by
Cozzarelli; P. Communale, Brescia, 1508, by Formentone;
P. Albergati, Bologna, 1510; P. Ducale, Mantua, 1520-40;
P. Giustiniani, Padua, by Falconetto, 1524; Ospedale del Ceppo,
Pistoia, 1525; Madonna delle Grazie, Pistoia, by Vitoni, 1535;
P. Buoncampagni-Ludovisi, Bologna, 1545; Cathedral, Padua, 1550,
by Righetti and della Valle, after M. Angelo; P. Bernardini, 1560,
and P. Ducale, 1578, at Lucca, both by Ammanati.
[Footnote 25: See Appendix B.]
17TH CENTURY: Chapel of the Princes in S. Lorenzo, Florence, 1604,
by Nigetti; S. Pietro, Bologna, 1605; S. Andrea delle Fratte,
Rome, 1612; Villa Borghese, Rome, 1616, by Vasanzio; P. Contarini
delle Scrigni, Venice, by Scamozzi; Badia at Florence, rebuilt
1625 by Segaloni; S. Ignazio, Rome, 1626-85; Museum of the
Capitol, Rome, 1644-50; Church of Gli Scalzi, Venice, 1649;
P. Pesaro, Venice, by Longhena, 1650; S. Moisé, Venice, 1668;
Brera Palace, Milan; S. M. Zobenigo, Venice, 1680; Dogana di Mare,
Venice, 1686, by Benone; Santi Apostoli, Rome.
18TH AND EARLY 19TH CENTURY: Gesuati, at Venice, 1715-30;
S. Geremia, Venice, 1753, by Corbellini; P. Braschi, Rome, by
Morelli, 1790; Nuova Fabbrica, Venice, 1810.
CHAPTER XXII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson, Müntz, Palustre. Also
Berty, _La Renaissance monumentale en France_. Château, _Histoire
et caractères de l’architecture en France_. Daly, _Motifs
historiques d’architecture et de sculpture_. De Laborde, _La
Renaissance des arts à la cour de France_. Du Cerceau, _Les plus
excellents bastiments de France_. Lübke, _Geschichte der
Renaissance in Frankreich_. Mathews, _The Renaissance under the
Valois Kings_. Palustre, _La Renaissance en France_. Pattison,
_The Renaissance of the Fine Arts in France_. Rouyer et Darcel,
_L’Art architectural en France_. Sauvageot, _Choix de palais,
châteaux, hôtels, et maisons de France_.
+ORIGIN AND CHARACTER.+ The vitality and richness of the Gothic style in
France, even in its decline in the fifteenth century, long stood in the
way of any general introduction of classic forms. When the Renaissance
appeared, it came as a foreign importation, introduced from Italy by the
king and the nobility. It underwent a protracted transitional phase,
during which the national Gothic forms and traditions were picturesquely
mingled with those of the Renaissance. The campaigns of Charles VIII.
(1489), Louis XII. (1499), and Francis I. (1515), in vindication of
their claims to the thrones of Naples and Milan, brought these monarchs
and their nobles into contact with the splendid material and artistic
civilization of Italy, then in the full tide of the maturing
Renaissance. They returned to France, filled with the ambition to rival
the splendid palaces and gardens of Italy, taking with them Italian
artists to teach their arts to the French. But while these Italians
successfully introduced many classic elements and details into French
architecture, they wholly failed to dominate the French master-masons
and _tailleurs de pierre_ in matters of planning and general
composition. The early Renaissance architecture of France is
consequently wholly unlike the Italian, from which it derived only minor
details and a certain largeness and breadth of spirit.
+PERIODS.+ The French Renaissance and its sequent developments may be
broadly divided into three periods, with subdivisions coinciding more or
less closely with various reigns, as follows:
I. THE VALOIS PERIOD, or Renaissance proper, 1483-1589, subdivided into:
_a._ THE TRANSITION, comprising the reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis
XII. (1483-1515), and the early years of that of Francis I.;
characterized by a picturesque mixture of classic details with Gothic
conceptions.
_b._ THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I., or Early Renaissance, from about 1520 to
that king’s death in 1547; distinguished by a remarkable variety and
grace of composition and beauty of detail.
_c._ THE ADVANCED RENAISSANCE, comprising the reigns of Henry II.
(1547), Francis II. (1559), Charles IX. (1560), and Henry III.
(1574-89); marked by the gradual adoption of the classic orders and a
decline in the delicacy and richness of the ornament.
II. THE BOURBON OR CLASSIC PERIOD (1589-1715):
_a._ STYLE OF HENRY IV., covering his reign and partly that of Louis
XIII. (1610-45), employing the orders and other classic forms with a
somewhat heavy, florid style of ornament.
_b._ STYLE OF LOUIS XIV., beginning in the preceding reign and extending
through that of Louis XIV. (1645-1715); the great age of classic
architecture in France, corresponding to the Palladian in Italy.
III. THE DECLINE OR ROCOCO PERIOD, corresponding with the reign of Louis
XV. (1715-74); marked by pompous extravagance and capriciousness.
During this period a reaction set in toward a severer classicism,
leading to the styles of Louis XVI. and of the Empire, to be treated of
in a later chapter.
+THE TRANSITION.+ As early as 1475 the new style made its appearance in
altars, tombs, and rood-screens wrought by French carvers with the
collaboration of Italian artificers. The tomb erected by Charles of
Anjou to his father in Le Mans cathedral (1475, by _Francesco Laurana_),
the chapel of St. Lazare in the cathedral of Marseilles (1483), and the
tomb of the children of Charles VIII. in Tours cathedral (1506), by
_Michel Columbe_, the greatest artist of his time in France, are
examples. The schools of Rouen and Tours were especially prominent in
works of this kind, marked by exuberant fancy and great delicacy of
execution. In church architecture Gothic traditions were long dominant,
in spite of the great numbers of Italian prelates in France. It was in
_châteaux_, palaces, and dwellings that the new style achieved its most
notable triumphs.
+EARLY CHÂTEAUX.+ The castle of Charles VIII., at Amboise on the Loire,
shows little trace of Italian influence. It was under Louis XII. that
the transformation of French architecture really began. The +Château de
Gaillon+ (of which unfortunately only fragments remain in the École des
Beaux-Arts at Paris), built for the Cardinal George of Amboise, between
1497 and 1509, by _Pierre Fain_, was the masterwork of the Rouen school.
It presented a curious mixture of styles, with its irregular plan, its
moat, drawbridge, and round corner-towers, its high roofs, turrets, and
dormers, which gave it, in spite of many Renaissance details, a mediæval
picturesqueness. The +Château de Blois+ (the east and south wings of the
present group), begun for Louis XII. about 1500, was the first of a
remarkable series of royal palaces which are the glory of French
architecture. It shows the new influences in its horizontal lines and
flat, unbroken façades of brick and stone, rather than in its
architectural details (Fig. 175). The +Ducal Palace+ at Nancy and the
+Hôtel de Ville+ at Orléans, by _Viart_, show a similar commingling of
the classic and mediæval styles.
[Illustration: FIG. 175.--BLOIS, COURT FAÇADE OF WING
OF LOUIS XII.]
+STYLE OF FRANCIS I.+ Early in the reign of this monarch, and partly
under the lead of Italian artists, like il Rosso, Serlio, and
Primaticcio, classic elements began to dominate the general composition
and Gothic details rapidly disappeared. A simple and effective system of
exterior design was adopted in the castles and palaces of this period.
Finely moulded belt-courses at the sills and heads of the windows marked
the different stories, and were crossed by a system of almost equally
important vertical lines, formed by superposed pilasters flanking the
windows continuously from basement to roof. The façade was crowned by a
slight cornice and open balustrade, above which rose a steep and lofty
roof, diversified by elaborate dormer windows which were adorned with
gables and pinnacles (Fig. 178). Slender pilasters, treated like long
panels ornamented with arabesques of great beauty, or with a species of
baluster shaft like a candelabrum, were preferred to columns, and were
provided with graceful capitals of the Corinthianesque type. The
mouldings were minute and richly carved; pediments were replaced by
steep gables, and mullioned windows with stone crossbars were used in
preference to the simpler Italian openings. In the earlier monuments
Gothic details were still used occasionally; and round corner-towers,
high dormers, and numerous turrets and pinnacles appear even in the
châteaux of later date.
+CHURCHES.+ Ecclesiastical architecture received but scant attention
under Francis I., and, so far as it was practised, still clung
tenaciously to Gothic principles. Among the few important churches of
this period may be mentioned +St. Etienne du Mont+, at Paris (1517-38),
in which classic and Gothic features appear in nearly equal proportions;
the east end of +St. Pierre+, at Caen, with rich external carving; and
the great parish church of +St. Eustache+, at Paris (1532, by
_Lemercier_), in which the plan and construction are purely Gothic,
while the details throughout belong to the new style, though with little
appreciation of the spirit and proportions of classic art. New façades
were also built for a number of already existing churches, among which
+St. Michel+, at Dijon, is conspicuous, with its vast portal arch and
imposing towers. The Gothic towers of Tours cathedral were completed
with Renaissance lanterns or belfries, the northern in 1507, the
southern in 1547.
+PALACES.+ To the palace at Blois begun by his predecessor, Francis I.
added a northern and a western wing, completing the court. The north
wing is one of the masterpieces of the style, presenting toward the
court a simple and effective composition, with a rich but slightly
projecting cornice and a high roof with elaborate dormers. This façade
is divided into two unequal sections by the open +Staircase Tower+ (Fig.
176), a _chef-d’œuvre_ in boldness of construction as well as in
delicacy and richness of carving. The outer façade of this wing is a
less ornate but more vigorous design, crowned by a continuous open
loggia under the roof. More extensive than Blois was +Fontainebleau+,
the favorite residence of the king and of many of his successors.
Following in parts the irregular plan of the convent it replaced, its
other portions were more symmetrically disposed, while the whole was
treated externally in a somewhat severe, semi-classic style, singularly
lacking in ornament. Internally, however, this palace, begun in 1528 by
_Gilles Le Breton_, was at that time the most splendid in France, the
gallery of Francis I. being especially noted. The +Château+ of +St.
Germain+, near Paris (1539, by _Pierre Chambiges_), is of a very
different character. Built largely of brick, with flat balustraded roof
and deep buttresses carrying three ranges of arches, it is neither
Gothic nor classic, neither fortress nor palace in aspect, but a wholly
unique conception.
[Illustration: FIG. 176.--STAIRCASE TOWER, BLOIS.]
[Illustration: FIG. 177.--PLAN OF CHAMBORD.]
[Illustration: FIG. 178.--VIEW OF CHAMBORD.]
The rural châteaux and hunting-lodges erected by Francis I. display the
greatest diversity of plan and treatment, attesting the inventiveness of
the French genius, expressing itself in a new-found language, whose
formal canons it disdained. Chief among them is the +Château of
Chambord+ (Figs. 177, 178)--“a Fata Morgana in the midst of a wild,
woody thicket,” to use Lübke’s language. This extraordinary edifice,
resembling in plan a feudal castle with curtain-walls, bastions, moat,
and donjon, is in its architectural treatment a palace with arcades,
open-stair towers, a noble double spiral staircase terminating in a
graceful lantern, and a roof of the most bewildering complexity of
towers, chimneys, and dormers (1526, by _Pierre le Nepveu_). The
hunting-lodges of La Muette and Chalvau, and the so-called +Château de
Madrid+--all three demolished during or since the Revolution--deserve
mention, especially the last. This consisted of two rectangular
pavilions, connected by a lofty banquet-hall, and adorned externally
with arcades in Florentine style, and with medallions and reliefs of
della Robbia ware (1527, by _Gadyer_).
+THE LOUVRE.+ By far the most important of all the architectural
enterprises of this reign, in ultimate results, if not in original
extent, was the beginning of a new palace to replace the old Gothic
fortified palace of the Louvre. To this task Pierre Lescot was summoned
in 1542, and the work of erection actually begun in 1546. The new
palace, in a sumptuous and remarkably dignified classic style, was to
have covered precisely the area of the demolished fortress. Only the
southwest half, comprising two sides of the court, was, however,
undertaken at the outset (Fig. 179). It remained for later monarchs to
amplify the original scheme, and ultimately to complete, late in the
present century, the most extensive and beautiful of all the royal
residences of Europe. (See Figs. 181, 208, 209.)
[Illustration: FIG. 179.--DETAIL OF COURT OF LOUVRE, PARIS.]
Want of space forbids more than a passing reference to the rural castles
of the nobility, rivalling those of the king. Among them Bury, La
Rochefoucauld, Bournazel, and especially +Azay-le-Rideau+ (1520) and
+Chenonceaux+ (1515-23), may be mentioned, all displaying that love of
rural pleasure, that hatred of the city and its confinement, which so
distinguish the French from the Italian Renaissance.
+OTHER BUILDINGS.+ The +Hôtel-de-Ville+ (town hall), of Paris, begun
during this reign, from plans by _Domenico di Cortona_ (?), and
completed under Henry IV., was the most important edifice of a class
which in later periods numbered many interesting structures. The town
hall of +Beaugency+ (1527) is one of the best of minor public buildings
in France, and in its elegant treatment of a simple two-storied façade
may be classed with the +Maison François I.+, at Paris. This stood
formerly at Moret, whence it was transported to Paris and re-erected
about 1830 in somewhat modified form. The large city houses of this
period are legion; we can mention only the Hôtel Carnavalet at Paris;
the Hôtel Bourgtheroude at Rouen; the Hôtel d’Écoville at Caen; the
archbishop’s palace at Sens, and a number of houses in Orléans. The
+Tomb of Louis XII.+, at St. Denis, deserves especial mention for its
fine proportions and beautiful arabesques.
+THE ADVANCED RENAISSANCE.+ By the middle of the sixteenth century the
new style had lost much of its earlier charm. The orders, used with
increasing frequency, were more and more conformed to antique
precedents. Façades were flatter and simpler, cornices more pronounced,
arches more Roman in treatment, and a heavier style of carving took the
place of the delicate arabesques of the preceding age. The reigns of
Henry II. (1547-59) and Charles IX. (1560-74) were especially
distinguished by the labors of three celebrated architects: _Pierre
Lescot_ (1515-78), who continued the work on the southwest angle of the
Louvre; _Jean Bullant_ (1515-78), to whom are due the right wing of
Ecouen and the porch of colossal Corinthian columns in the left wing of
the same, built under Francis I.; and, finally, _Philibert de l’Orme_
(1515-70). _Jean Goujon_ (1510-72) also executed during this period most
of the remarkable architectural sculptures which have made his name one
of the most illustrious in the annals of French art. Chief among the
works of de l’Orme was the palace of the +Tuileries+, built under
Charles IX. for Cathérine de Médicis, not far from the Louvre, with
which it was ultimately connected by a long gallery. Of the vast plan
conceived for this palace, and comprising a succession of courts and
wings, only a part of one side was erected (1564-72). This consisted of
a domical pavilion, flanked by low wings only a story and a half high,
to which were added two stories under Henry IV., to the great advantage
of the design. Another masterpiece was the +Château d’Anet+, built in
1552 by Henry II. for Diane de Poitiers, of which, unfortunately, only
fragments survive. This beautiful edifice, while retaining the
semi-military moat and bastions of feudal tradition, was planned with
classic symmetry, adorned with superposed orders, court arcades, and
rectangular corner-pavilions, and provided with a domical cruciform
chapel, the earliest of its class in France. All the details were
unusually pure and correct, with just enough of freedom and variety to
lend a charm wanting in later works of the period. To the reign of Henry
II. belong also the châteaux of Ancy-le-Franc, Verneuil, Chantilly (the
“petit château,” by Bullant), the banquet-hall over the bridge at
Chenonceaux (1556), several notable residences at Toulouse, and the tomb
of Francis I. at St. Denis. The châteaux of +Pailly+ and +Sully+,
distinguished by the sobriety and monumental quality of their
composition, in which the orders are important elements, belong to the
reign of Charles IX., together with the Tuileries, already mentioned.
[Illustration: FIG. 180.--THE LUXEMBURG, PARIS.]
+THE CLASSIC PERIOD: HENRY IV.+ Under this energetic but capricious
monarch (1589-1610) and his Florentine queen, Marie de Médicis,
architecture entered upon a new period of activity and a new stage of
development. Without the charm of the early Renaissance or the
stateliness of the age of Louis XIV., it has a touch of the Baroque,
attributable partly to the influence of Marie de Médicis and her Italian
prelates, and partly to the Italian training of many of the French
architects. The great work of this period was the extension of the
Tuileries by _J. B. du Cerceau_, and the completion, by _Métézeau_ and
others, of the long gallery next the Seine, begun under Henry II., with
the view of connecting the Tuileries with the Louvre. In this part of
the work colossal orders were used with indifferent effect. Next in
importance was the addition to Fontainebleau of a great court to the
eastward, whose relatively quiet and dignified style offers less
contrast than one might expect to the other wings and courts dating from
Francis I. More successful architecturally than either of the above was
the +Luxemburg+ palace, built for the queen by _Salomon De Brosse_, in
1616 (Fig. 180). Its plan presents the favorite French arrangement of a
main building separated from the street by a garden or court, the latter
surrounded on three sides by low wings containing the dependencies.
Externally, rusticated orders recall the garden front of the Pitti at
Florence; but the scale is smaller, and the projecting pavilions and
high roofs give it a grace and picturesqueness wanting in the Florentine
model. The +Place Royale+, at Paris, and the château of Beaumesnil,
illustrate a type of brick-and-stone architecture much in vogue at this
time, stone quoins decorating the windows and corners, and the orders
being generally omitted.
Under Louis XIII. the Tuileries were extended northward and the Louvre
as built by Lescot was doubled in size by the architect _Lemercier_, the
Pavillon de l’Horloge being added to form the centre of the enlarged
court façade.
+CHURCHES.+ To this reign belong also the most important churches of the
period. The church of +St. Paul-St. Louis+, at Paris (1627, by
_Derrand_), displays the worst faults of the time, in the overloaded and
meaningless decoration of its uninteresting front. Its internal dome is
the earliest in Paris. Far superior was the chapel of the +Sorbonne+,
a well-designed domical church by _Lemercier_, with a sober and
appropriate exterior treated with superposed orders.
+PERIOD OF LOUIS XIV.+ This was an age of remarkable literary and
artistic activity, pompous and pedantic in many of its manifestations,
but distinguished also by productions of a very high order. Although
contemporary with the Italian Baroque--Bernini having been the guest of
Louis XIV.--the architecture of this period was free from the wild
extravagances of that style. In its often cold and correct dignity it
resembled rather that of Palladio, making large use of the orders in
exterior design, and tending rather to monotony than to overloaded
decoration. In interior design there was more of lightness and caprice.
Papier-maché and stucco were freely used in a fanciful style of relief
ornamentation by scrolls, wreaths, shells, etc., and decorative
panelling was much employed. The whole was saved from triviality only by
the controlling lines of the architecture which framed it. But it was
better suited to cabinet-work or to the prettinesses of the boudoir than
to monumental interiors. The +Galerie d’Apollon+, built during this
reign over the Petite Galerie in the Louvre, escapes this reproach,
however, by the sumptuous dignity of its interior treatment.
+VERSAILLES.+ This immense edifice, built about an already existing
villa of Louis XIII., was the work of _Levau_ and _J. H. Mansart_
(1647-1708). Its erection, with the laying out of its marvellous park,
almost exhausted the resources of the realm, but with results quite
incommensurate with the outlay. In spite of its vastness, its exterior
is commonplace; the orders are used with singular monotony, which is not
redeemed by the deep breaks and projections of the main front. There is
no controlling or dominant feature; there is no adequate entrance or
approach; the grand staircases are badly placed and unworthily treated,
and the different elements of the plan are combined with singular lack
of the usual French sense of monumental and rational arrangement. The
chapel is by far the best single feature in the design.
Far more successful was the completion of the Louvre, in 1688, from the
designs of _Claude Perrault_, the court physician, whose plans were
fortunately adopted in preference to those of Bernini. For the east
front he designed a magnificent Corinthian colonnade nearly 600 feet
long, with coupled columns upon a plain high basement, and with a
central pediment and terminal pavilions (Fig. 181). The whole forms one
of the most imposing façades in existence; but it is a mere decoration,
having no practical relation to the building behind it. Its height
required the addition of a third story to match it on the north and
south sides of the court, which as thus completed quadrupled the
original area proposed by Lescot. Fortunately the style of Lescot’s work
was retained throughout in the court façades, while externally the
colonnade was recalled on the south front by a colossal order of
pilasters. The Louvre as completed by Louis XIV. was a stately and noble
palace, as remarkable for the surpassing excellence of the sculptures of
Jean Goujon as for the dignity and beauty of its architecture. Taken in
connection with the Tuileries, it was unrivalled by any palace in Europe
except the Vatican.
[Illustration: FIG. 181.--COLONNADE OF LOUVRE.]
+OTHER BUILDINGS.+ To Louis XIV. is also due the vast but uninteresting
+Hôtel des Invalides+ or veteran’s asylum, at Paris, by J. H. Mansart.
To the chapel of this institution was added, in 1680-1706, the
celebrated +Dome+ of the Invalides, a masterpiece by the same architect.
In plan it somewhat resembles Bramante’s scheme for St. Peter’s--a Greek
cross with domical chapels in the four angles and a dome over the
centre. The exterior (Fig. 182), with the lofty gilded dome on a high
drum adorned with engaged columns, is somewhat high for its breadth, but
is a harmonious and impressive design; and the interior, if somewhat
cold, is elegant and well proportioned. The chief innovation in the
design was the wide separation of the interior stone dome from the lofty
exterior decorative cupola and lantern of wood, this separation being
designed to meet the conflicting demands of internal and external
effect. To the same architect is due the formal monotony of the +Place
Vendôme+, all the houses surrounding it being treated with a uniform
architecture of colossal pilasters, at once monumental and
inappropriate. One of the most pleasing designs of the time is the
+Château de Maisons+ (1658), by _F. Mansart_, uncle of J. H. Mansart. In
this the proportions of the central and terminal pavilions, the mass and
lines of the steep roof _à la Mansarde_, the simple and effective use of
the orders, and the refinement of all the details impart a grace of
aspect rare in contemporary works. The same qualities appear also in the
+Val-de-Grâce+, by F. Mansart and Lemercier, a domical church of
excellent proportions begun under Louis XIII. The want of space forbids
mention of other buildings of this period.
[Illustration: FIG. 182.--DOME OF THE INVALIDES.]
+THE DECLINE.+ Under Louis XV. the pedantry of the classic period gave
place to a protracted struggle between license and the severest
classical correctness. The exterior designs of this time were often even
more uninteresting and bare than under Louis XIV.; while, on the other
hand, interior decoration tended to the extreme of extravagance and
disregard of constructive propriety. Contorted lines and crowded
scrolls, shells, and palm-leaves adorned the mantelpieces, cornices, and
ceilings, to the almost complete suppression of straight lines.
[Illustration: FIG. 183.--FAÇADE OF ST. SULPICE, PARIS.]
While these tendencies prevailed in many directions, a counter-current
of severe classicism manifested itself in the designs of a number of
important public buildings, in which it was sought to copy the grandeur
of the old Roman colonnades and arcades. The important church of +St.
Sulpice+ at Paris (Fig. 183) is an excellent example of this. Its
interior, dating from the preceding century, is well designed, but in no
wise a remarkable composition, following Italian models. The façade,
added in 1755 by _Servandoni_, is, on the other hand, one of the most
striking architectural objects in the city. It is a correct and well
proportioned classic composition in two stories--an Ionic arcade over a
Doric colonnade, surmounted by two lateral turrets. Other monuments of
this classic revival will be noticed in Chapter XXV.
+PUBLIC SQUARES.+ Much attention was given to the embellishment of open
spaces in the cities, for which the classic style was admirably suited.
The most important work of this kind was that on the north side of the
Place de la Concorde, Paris. This splendid square, perhaps, on the
whole, the finest in Europe (though many of its best features belong to
a later date), was at this time adorned with the two monumental
colonnades by _Gabriel_. These colonnades, which form the decorative
fronts for blocks of houses, deserve praise for the beauty of their
proportions, as well as for the excellent treatment of the arcade on
which they rest, and of the pavilions at the ends.
+IN GENERAL.+ French Renaissance architecture is marked by good
proportions and harmonious and appropriate detail. Its most interesting
phase was unquestionably that of Francis I., so far, at least, as
concerns exterior design. It steadily progressed, however, in its
mastery of planning; and in its use of projecting pavilions crowned by
dominant masses of roof, it succeeded in preserving, even in severely
classic designs, a picturesqueness and variety otherwise impossible.
Roofs, dormers, chimneys, and staircases it treated with especial
success; and in these matters, as well as in monumental dispositions of
plan, the French have largely retained their pre-eminence to our own
day.
+MONUMENTS.+ (Mainly supplementary to text. Ch. = château; P. =
palace; C. = cathedral; Chu. = church; H. = hôtel; T.H. = town
hall.)
TRANSITION: Blois, E. wing, 1499; Ch. Meillant; Ch. Chaumont; T.H.
Amboise, 1502-05.
FRANCIS I.: Ch. Nantouillet, 1517-25; Ch. Blois, W. wing
(afterward demolished) and N. wing, 1520-30; H. Lallemant,
Bourges, 1520; Ch. Villers-Cotterets, 1520-59; P. of Archbishop,
Sens, 1521-35; P. Fontainebleau (Cour Ovale, Cour d’Adieux,
Gallery Francis I., 1527-34; Peristyle, Chapel St. Saturnin,
1540-47, by _Gilles le Breton_; Cour du Cheval Blanc, 1527-31, by
_P. Chambiges_); H. Bernuy, Toulouse, 1528-39; P. Granvelle,
Besançon, 1532-40; T.H. Niort, T.H. Loches, 1532-43: H. de Ligeris
(Carnavalet), Paris, 1544, by _P. Lescot_; churches of Gisors,
nave and façade, 1530; La Dalbade, Toulouse, portal, 1530; St.
Symphorien Tours, 1531; Chu. Tillières, 1534-46.
ADVANCED RENAISSANCE: Fontaine des Innocents, Paris, 1547-50, by
_P. Lescot_ and _J. Goujon_; tomb Francis I., at St. Denis, 1555,
by _Ph. de l’Orme_; H. Catelan, Toulouse, 1555; tomb Henry II., at
St. Denis, 1560; portal S. Michel, Dijon, 1564; Ch. Sully, 1567;
T.H. Arras, 1573; P. Fontainebleau (Cour du Cheval Blanc
remodelled, 1564-66, by _P. Girard_; Cour de la Fontaine, same
date); T.H. Besançon, 1582; Ch. Charleval, 1585, by, _J. B. du
Cerceau_.
STYLE OF HENRY IV.: P. Fontainebleau (Galerie des Cerfs, Chapel of
the Trinity, Baptistery, etc.); P. Tuileries (Pav. de Flore, by
_du Cerceau_, 1590-1610; long gallery continued); Hôtel Vogüé, at
Dijon, 1607; Place Dauphine, Paris, 1608; P. de Justice, Paris,
Great Hall, by _S. de Brosse_, 1618; H. Sully, Paris, 1624-39;
P. Royal, Paris, by _J. Lemercier_, for Cardinal Richelieu,
1627-39; P. Louvre doubled in size, by the same; P. Tuileries (N.
wing, and Pav. Marsan, long gallery completed); H. Lambert, Paris;
T.H. Reims, 1627; Ch. Blois, W. wing for Gaston d’Orléans, by _F.
Mansart_, 1635; façade St. Étienne du Mont, Paris, 1610; of St.
Gervais, Paris, 1616-21, by _S. de Brosse_.
STYLE OF LOUIS XIV.: T.H. Lyons, 1646; P. Louvre, E. colonnade and
court completed, 1660-70; Tuileries altered by Le Vau, 1664;
observatory at Paris, 1667-72; arch of St. Denis, Paris, 1672, by
_Blondel_; Arch of St. Martin, 1674, by _Bullet_; Banque de
France, H. de Luyne, H. Soubise, all in Paris; Ch. Chantilly; Ch.
de Tanlay; P. St. Cloud; Place des Victoires, 1685; Chu. St.
Sulpice, Paris, by _Le Vau_ (façade, 1755); Chu. St. Roch, Paris,
1653, by _Lemercier_ and _de Cotte_; Notre Dame des Victoires,
Paris, 1656, by _Le Muet_ and _Bruant_.
THE DECLINE: P. Bourbon, 1722; T.H. Rouen; Halle aux Blés
(recently demolished), 1748; École Militaire, 1752-58, by
_Gabriel_; P. Louvre, court completed, 1754, by the same;
Madeleine begun, 1764; H. des Monnaies (Mint), by _Antoine_; École
de Médecine, 1774, by _Gondouin_; P. Royal, Great Court, 1784, by
_Louis_; Théâtre Français, 1784 (all the above at Paris); Grand
Théâtre, Bordeaux, 1785-1800, by _Louis_; Préfecture at Bordeaux,
by the same; Ch. de Compiegne, 1770, by _Gabriel_; P. Versailles,
theatre by the same; H. Montmorency, Soubise, de Varennes, and the
Petit Luxembourg, all at Paris, by _de Cotte_; public squares at
Nancy, Bordeaux, Valenciennes, Rennes, Reims.
CHAPTER XXIII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson, Palustre. Also, Belcher
and Macartney, _Later Renaissance Architecture in England_.
Billings, _Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland_.
Blomfield, _A Short History of Renaissance Architecture in
England_. Britton, _Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain_.
Ewerbeck, _Die Renaissance in Belgien und Holland_. Galland,
_Geschichte der Hollandischen Baukunst im Zeitalter der
Renaissance_. Gotch and Brown, _Architecture of the Renaissance in
England_. Loftie, _Inigo Jones and Wren_. Nash, _Mansions of
England_. Papworth, _Renaissance and Italian Styles of
Architecture in Great Britain_. Richardson, _Architectural Remains
of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I._ Schayes, _Histoire de
l’architecture en Belgique_.
+THE TRANSITION.+ The architectural activity of the sixteenth century in
England was chiefly devoted to the erection of vast country mansions for
the nobility and wealthy _bourgeoisie_. In these seignorial residences a
degenerate form of the Gothic, known as the Tudor style, was employed
during the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and they still retained
much of the feudal aspect of the Middle Ages. This style, with its
broad, square windows and ample halls, was well suited to domestic
architecture, as well as to collegiate buildings, of which a
considerable number were erected at this time. Among the more important
palaces and manor-houses of this period are the earlier parts of Hampton
Court, Haddon and Hengreave Halls, and the now ruined castles of Raglan
and Wolterton.
[Illustration: FIG. 184.--BURGHLEY HOUSE.]
+ELIZABETHAN STYLE.+ Under Elizabeth (1558-1603) the progress of classic
culture and the employment of Dutch and Italian artists led to a gradual
introduction of Renaissance forms, which, as in France, were at first
mingled with others of Gothic origin. Among the foreign artists in
England were the versatile Holbein, Trevigi and Torregiano from Italy,
and Theodore Have, Bernard Jansen, and Gerard Chrismas from Holland. The
pointed arch disappeared, and the orders began to be used as subordinate
features in the decoration of doors, windows, chimneys, and mantels.
Open-work balustrades replaced externally the heavy Tudor battlements,
and a peculiar style of carving in flat relief-patterns, resembling
_appliqué_ designs cut out with the jigsaw and attached by nails or
rivets, was applied with little judgment to all possible features.
Ceilings were commonly finished in plaster, with elaborate interlacing
patterns in low relief; and this, with the increasing use of interior
woodwork, gave to the mansions of this time a more homelike but less
monumental aspect internally. English architects, like Smithson and
Thorpe, now began to win the patronage at first monopolized by
foreigners. In +Wollaton Hall+ (1580), by Smithson, the orders were used
for the main composition with mullioned windows, much after the fashion
of +Longleat House+, completed a year earlier by his master, John of
Padua. During the following period, however (1590-1610), there was a
reaction toward the Tudor practice, and the orders were again relegated
to subordinate uses. Of their more monumental employment, the +Gate of
Honor+ of Caius College, Cambridge, is one of the earliest examples.
Hardwicke and Charlton Halls, and Burghley, Hatfield, and Holland Houses
(Fig. 184), are noteworthy monuments of the style.
+JACOBEAN STYLE.+ During the reign of James I. (1603-25), details of
classic origin came into more general use, but caricatured almost beyond
recognition. The orders, though much employed, were treated without
correctness or grace, and the ornament was unmeaning and heavy. It is
not worth while to dwell further upon this style, which produced no
important public buildings, and soon gave way to a more rigid
classicism.
+CLASSIC PERIOD.+ If the classic style was late in its appearance in
England, its final sway was complete and long-lasting. It was _Inigo
Jones_ (1572-1652) who first introduced the correct and monumental style
of the Italian masters of classic design. For Palladio, indeed, he seems
to have entertained a sort of veneration, and the villa which he
designed at Chiswick was a reduced copy of Palladio’s Villa Capra, near
Vicenza. This and other works of his show a failure to appreciate the
unsuitability of Italian conceptions to the climate and tastes of Great
Britain; his efforts to popularize Palladian architecture, without the
resources which Palladio controlled in the way of decorative sculpture
and painting, were consequently not always happy in their results. His
greatest work was the design for a new +Palace at Whitehall+, London. Of
this colossal scheme, which, if completed, would have ranked as the
grandest palace of the time, only the +Banqueting Hall+ (now used as a
museum) was ever built (Fig. 185). It is an effective composition in two
stories, rusticated throughout and adorned with columns and pilasters,
and contains a fine vaulted hall in three aisles. The plan of the
palace, which was to have measured 1,152 × 720 feet, was excellent,
largely conceived and carefully studied in its details, but it was
wholly beyond the resources of the kingdom. The garden-front of
+Somerset House+ (1632; demolished) had the same qualities of simplicity
and dignity, recalling the works of Sammichele. Wilton House, Coleshill,
the Villa at Chiswick, and St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, are the best known
of his works, showing him to have been a designer of ability, but hardly
of the consummate genius which his admirers attribute to him.
[Illustration: FIG. 185.--BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL.]
[Illustration: FIG. 186.--PLAN OF ST. PAUL’S, LONDON.]
+ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.+ The greatest of Jones’s successors was _Sir
Christopher Wren_ (1632-1723), principally known as the architect of
+St. Paul’s Cathedral+, London, built to replace the earlier Gothic
cathedral destroyed in the great fire of 1666. It was begun in 1675, and
its designer had the rare good fortune to witness its completion in
1710. The plan, as finally adopted, retained the general proportions of
an English Gothic church, measuring 480 feet in length, with transepts
250 feet long, and a grand rotunda 108 feet in diameter at the crossing
(Fig. 186). The style was strictly Italian, treated with sobriety and
dignity, if somewhat lacking in variety and inspiration. Externally two
stories of the Corinthian order appear, the upper story being merely a
screen to hide the clearstory and its buttresses. This is an
architectural deception, not atoned for by any special beauty of detail.
The dominant feature of the design is the dome over the central area. It
consists of an inner shell, reaching a height of 216 feet, above which
rises the exterior dome of wood, surmounted by a stone lantern, the
summit of which is 360 feet from the pavement (Fig. 187). This exterior
dome, springing from a high drum surrounded by a magnificent peristyle,
gives to the otherwise commonplace exterior of the cathedral a signal
majesty of effect. Next to the dome the most successful part of the
design is the west front, with its two-storied porch and flanking
bell-turrets. Internally the excessive relative length, especially that
of the choir, detracts from the effect of the dome, and the poverty of
detail gives the whole a somewhat bare aspect. It is intended to relieve
this ultimately by a systematic use of mosaic decoration, especially in
the dome. The central area itself, in spite of the awkward treatment of
the four smaller arches of the eight which support the dome, is a noble
design, occupying the whole width of the three aisles, like the Octagon
at Ely, and producing a striking effect of amplitude and grandeur. The
dome above it is constructively interesting from the employment of a
cone of brick masonry to support the stone lantern which rises above the
exterior wooden shell. The lower part of the cone forms the drum of the
inner dome, its contraction upward being intended to produce a
perspective illusion of increased height.
[Illustration: FIG. 187.--EXTERIOR OF ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.]
St. Paul’s ranks among the five or six greatest domical buildings of
Europe, and is the most imposing modern edifice in England.
+WREN’S OTHER WORKS.+ Wren was conspicuously successful in the designing
of parish churches in London. +St. Stephen’s+, Walbrook, is the most
admired of these, with a dome resting on eight columns. Wren may be
called the inventor of the English Renaissance type of steeple, in which
a conical or pyramidal spire is harmoniously added to a belfry on a
square tower with classic details. The steeple of +Bow Church+,
Cheapside, is the most successful example of the type. In secular
architecture Wren’s most important works were the plan for rebuilding
London after the Great Fire; the new courtyard of Hampton Court, a quiet
and dignified composition in brick and stone; the pavilions and
colonnade of +Greenwich Hospital+; the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, and
the Trinity College Library at Cambridge. Without profound originality,
these works testify to the sound good taste and intelligence of their
designer.
[Illustration: FIG. 188.--PLAN OF BLENHEIM.]
+THE 18TH CENTURY.+ The Anglo-Italian style as used by Jones and Wren
continued in use through the eighteenth century, during the first half
of which a number of important country-seats and some churches were
erected. _Van Brugh_ (1666-1726), _Hawksmoor_ (1666-1736), and _Gibbs_
(1683-1751) were then the leading architects. Van Brugh was especially
skilful in his dispositions of plan and mass, and produced in the
designs of Blenheim and Castle Howard effects of grandeur and variety of
perspective hardly equalled by any of his contemporaries in France or
Italy. +Blenheim+, with its monumental plan and the sweeping curves of
its front (Fig. 188), has an unusually palatial aspect, though the
striving for picturesqueness is carried too far. Castle Howard is
simpler, depending largely for effect on a somewhat inappropriate dome.
To Hawksmoor, his pupil, are due +St. Mary’s, Woolnoth+ (1715), at
London, in which by a bold rustication of the whole exterior and by
windows set in large recessed arches he was enabled to dispense wholly
with the orders; St. George’s, Bloomsbury; the new quadrangle of All
Souls at Oxford, and some minor works. The two most noted designs of
James Gibbs are +St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields+, at London (1726), and the
+Radcliffe Library+, at Oxford (1747). In the former the use of a
Corinthian portico--a practically uncalled-for but decorative
appendage--and of a steeple mounted on the roof, with no visible lines
of support from the ground, are open to criticism. But the excellence of
the proportions, and the dignity and appropriateness of the composition,
both internally and externally, go far to redeem these defects (Fig.
189). The Radcliffe Library is a circular domical hall surrounded by a
lower circuit of alcoves and rooms, the whole treated with
straightforward simplicity and excellent proportions. Colin Campbell,
Flitcroft, Kent and Wood, contemporaries of Gibbs, may be dismissed with
passing mention.
[Illustration: FIG. 189.--ST. MARTIN’S-IN-THE-FIELDS, LONDON.]
_Sir William Chambers_ (1726-96) was the greatest of the later
18th-century architects. His fame rests chiefly on his _Treatise on
Civil Architecture_, and the extension and remodelling of +Somerset
House+, in which he retained the general _ordonnance_ of Inigo Jones’s
design, adapting it to a frontage of some 600 feet. _Robert Adams_, the
designer of Keddlestone Hall, _Robert Taylor_ (1714-88), the architect
of the Bank of England, and _George Dance_, who designed the Mansion
House and Newgate Prison, at London--the latter a vigorous and
appropriate composition without the orders--close the list of noted
architects of the eighteenth century. It was a period singularly wanting
in artistic creativeness and spontaneity; its productions were nearly
all dull and respectable, or at best dignified, but without charm.
+BELGIUM.+ As in all other countries where the late Gothic style had
been highly developed, Belgium was slow to accept the principles of the
Renaissance in art. Long after the dawn of the sixteenth century the
Flemish architects continued to employ their highly florid Gothic alike
for churches and town-halls, with which they chiefly had to do. The
earliest Renaissance buildings date from 1530-40, among them being the
Hôtel du Saumon, at Malines, at Bruges the Ancien Greffe, by _Jean
Wallot_, and at Liège the +Archbishop’s Palace+, by _Borset_. The last
named, in the singular and capricious form of the arches and
baluster-like columns of its court, reveals the taste of the age for
what was _outré_ and odd; a taste partly due, no doubt, to Spanish
influences, as Belgium was in reality from 1506 to 1712 a Spanish
province, and there was more or less interchange of artists between the
two countries. The +Hôtel de Ville+, at Antwerp, by _Cornelius de
Vriendt_ or _Floris_ (1518-75), erected in 1565, is the most important
monument of the Renaissance in Belgium. Its façade, 305 feet long and
102 feet high, in four stories, is an impressive creation in spite of
its somewhat monotonous fenestration and the inartistic repetition in
the third story of the composition and proportions of the second. The
basement story forms an open arcade, and an open colonnade or loggia
runs along under the roof, thus imparting to the composition a
considerable play of light and shade, enhanced by the picturesque
central pavilion which rises to a height of six stories in diminishing
stages. The style is almost Palladian in its severity, but in general
the Flemish architects disdained the restrictions of classic canons,
preferring a more florid and fanciful effect than could be obtained by
mere combinations of Roman columns, arches, and entablatures. De
Vriendt’s other works were mostly designs for altars, tabernacles and
the like; among them the rood screen in Tournay Cathedral. His influence
may be traced in the Hôtel de Ville at Flushing (1594).
[Illustration: FIG. 190.--RENAISSANCE HOUSES, BRUSSELS.]
The ecclesiastical architecture of the Flemish Renaissance is almost as
destitute of important monuments as is the secular. +Ste. Anne+, at
Bruges, fairly illustrates the type, which is characterized in general
by heaviness of detail and a cold and bare aspect internally. The
Renaissance in Belgium is best exemplified, after all, by minor works
and ordinary dwellings, many of which have considerable artistic grace,
though they are quaint rather than monumental (Fig. 190). Stepped
gables, high dormers, and volutes flanking each diminishing stage of the
design, give a certain piquancy to the street architecture of the
period.
+HOLLAND.+ Except in the domain of realistic painting, the Dutch have
never manifested pre-eminent artistic endowments, and the Renaissance
produced in Holland few monuments of consequence. It began there, as in
many other places, with minor works in the churches, due largely to
Flemish or Italian artists. About the middle of the 16th century two
native architects, _Sebastian van Noye_ and _William van Noort_, first
popularized the use of carved pilasters and of gables or steep pediments
adorned with carved scallop-shells, in remote imitation of the style of
Francis I. The principal monuments of the age were town-halls, and,
after the war of independence in which the yoke of Spain was finally
broken (1566-79), local administrative buildings--mints, exchanges and
the like. The +Town Hall+ of +The Hague+ (1565), with its stepped gable
or great dormer, its consoles, statues, and octagonal turrets, may be
said to have inaugurated the style generally followed after the war.
Owing to the lack of stone, brick was almost universally employed, and
stone imported by sea was only used in edifices of exceptional cost and
importance. Of these the +Town Hall+ at Amsterdam holds the first place.
Its façade is of about the same dimensions as the one at Antwerp, but
compares unfavorably with it in its monotony and want of interest. The
+Leyden Town Hall+, by the Fleming, _Lieven de Key_ (1597), the Bourse
or Exchange and the Hanse House at Amsterdam, by _Hendrik de Keyser_,
are also worthy of mention, though many lesser buildings, built of brick
combined with enamelled terra-cotta and stone, possess quite as much
artistic merit.
+DENMARK.+ In Denmark the monuments of the Renaissance may almost be
said to be confined to the reign of Christian IV. (1588-1648), and do
not include a single church of any importance. The royal castles of the
+Rosenborg+ at Copenhagen (1610) and the +Fredericksborg+ (1580-1624),
the latter by a Dutch architect, are interesting and picturesque in
mass, with their fanciful gables, mullioned windows and numerous
turrets, but can hardly lay claim to beauty of detail or purity of
style. The Exchange at Copenhagen, built of brick and stone in the same
general style (1619-40), is still less interesting both in mass and
detail.
The only other important Scandinavian monument deserving of special
mention in so brief a sketch as this is the +Royal Palace+ at
+Stockholm+, Sweden (1698-1753), due to a foreign architect, _Nicodemus
de Tessin_. It is of imposing dimensions, and although simple in
external treatment, it merits praise for the excellent disposition of
its plan, its noble court, imposing entrances, and the general dignity
and appropriateness of its architecture.
+MONUMENTS+ (in addition to those mentioned in text). ENGLAND,
TUDOR STYLE: Several palaces by Henry VIII., no longer extant;
Westwood, later rebuilt; Gosfield Hall; Harlaxton.--ELIZABETHAN:
Buckhurst, 1565; Kirby House, 1570, both by Thorpe; Caius College,
1570-75, by Theodore Have; “The Schools,” Oxford, by Thomas Holt,
1600; Beaupré Castle, 1600.--JACOBEAN: Tombs of Mary of Scotland
and of Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey; Audsley Inn; Bolsover
Castle, 1613; Heriot’s Hospital, Edinburgh, 1628.--CLASSIC or
ANGLO-ITALIAN: St. John’s College, Oxford; Queen’s House,
Greenwich; Coleshill; all by Inigo Jones, 1620-51; Amesbury, by
Webb; Combe Abbey; Buckingham and Montague Houses; The Monument,
London, 1670, by Wren; Temple Bar, by the same; Winchester Palace,
1683; Chelsea College; Towers of Westminster Abbey, 1696; St.
Clement Dane’s; St. James’s, Westminster; St. Peter’s, Cornhill,
and many others, all by Wren.--18TH CENTURY: Seaton Delaval and
Grimsthorpe, by Van Brugh; Wanstead House, by Colin Campbell;
Treasury Buildings, by Kent.
The most important Renaissance buildings of BELGIUM and HOLLAND
have been mentioned in the text.
CHAPTER XXIV.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson, Palustre Also, von
Bezold, _Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Deutschland, Holland,
Belgien und Dänemark_ (in _Hdbuch. d. Arch._). Caveda (tr.
Kugler), _Geschichte der Baukunst in Spanien_. Fritsch, _Denkmäler
der deutschen Renaissance_ (plates). Junghändel, _Die Baukunst
Spaniens_. Lambert und Stahl, _Motive der deutschen Architektur_.
Lübke, _Geschichte der Renaissance in Deutschland_. Prentice,
_Renaissance Architecture and Ornament in Spain_. Uhde,
_Baudenkmäler in Spanien_. Verdier et Cattois, _Architecture
civile et domestique_. Villa Amil, _Hispania Artistica y
Monumental_.
+AUSTRIA+; +BOHEMIA+. The earliest appearance of the Renaissance in the
architecture of the German states was in the eastern provinces. Before
the close of the fifteenth century Florentine and Milanese architects
were employed in Austria, Bohemia, and the Tyrol, where there are a
number of palaces and chapels in an unmixed Italian style. The portal of
the castle of Mahrisch-Trübau dates from 1492; while to the early years
of the 16th century belong a cruciform chapel at Gran, the remodelling
of the castle at Cracow, and the chapel of the Jagellons in the same
city--the earliest domical structure of the German Renaissance, though
of Italian design. The +Schloss Porzia+ (1510), at Spital in Carinthia,
is a fine quadrangular palace, surrounding a court with arcades on three
sides, in which the open stairs form a picturesque interruption with
their rampant arches. But for the massiveness of the details it might be
a Florentine palace. In addition to this, the famous +Arsenal+ at
Wiener-Neustadt (1524), the portal of the Imperial Palace (1552), and
the +Castle Schalaburg+ on the Danube (1530-1601), are attributed to
Italian architects, to whom must also be ascribed a number of important
works at Prague. Chief among these the +Belvedere+ (1536, by _Paolo
della Stella_), a rectangular building surrounded by a graceful open
arcade, above which it rises with a second story crowned by a curved
roof; the Waldstein Palace (1621-29), by _Giov. Marini_, with its
imposing loggia; +Schloss Stern+, built on the plan of a six-pointed
star (1459-1565) and embellished by Italian artists with stucco
ornaments and frescoes; and parts of the palace on the Hradschin, by
_Scamozzi_, attest the supremacy of Italian art in Bohemia. The same is
true of Styria, Carinthia, and the Tyrol; _e.g._ +Schloss Ambras+ at
Innsbrück (1570).
+GERMANY: PERIODS.+ The earliest manifestation of the Renaissance in
what is now the German Empire, appeared in the works of painters like
Dürer and Burkmair, and in occasional buildings previous to 1525. The
real transformation of German architecture, however, hardly began until
after the Peace of Augsburg, in 1555. From that time on its progress was
rapid, its achievements being almost wholly in the domain of secular
architecture--princely and ducal castles, town halls or _Rathhäuser_,
and houses of wealthy burghers or corporations. It is somewhat singular
that the German emperors should not have undertaken the construction of
a new imperial residence on a worthy scale, the palaces of Munich and
Berlin being aggregations of buildings of various dates about a nucleus
of mediæval origin, and with no single portion to compare with the
stately châteaux of the French kings. Church architecture was neglected,
owing to the Reformation, which turned to its own uses the existing
churches, while the Roman Catholics were too impoverished to replace the
edifices they had lost.
The periods of the German Renaissance are less well marked than those of
the French; but its successive developments follow the same general
progression, divided into three stages:
I. THE EARLY RENAISSANCE, 1525-1600, in which the orders were
infrequently used, mainly for porches and for gable decoration. The
conceptions and spirit of most monuments were still strongly tinged with
Gothic feeling.
II. THE LATE RENAISSANCE, 1600-1675, characterized by a dry, heavy
treatment, in which too often neither the fanciful gayety of the
previous period nor the simple and monumental dignity of classic design
appears. Broken curves, large scrolls, obelisks, and a style of flat
relief carving resembling the Elizabethan are common. Occasional
monuments exhibit a more correct and classic treatment after Italian
models.
III. THE DECLINE OR BAROQUE PERIOD, 1675-1800, employing the orders in a
style of composition oscillating between the extremes of bareness and of
Rococo over-decoration. The ornament partakes of the character of the
Louis XV. and Italian Jesuit styles, being most successful in interior
decoration, but externally running to the extreme of unrestrained fancy.
[Illustration: FIG. 191.--SCHLOSS HÄMELSCHENBURG.]
+CHARACTERISTICS.+ In none of these periods do we meet with the sober,
monumental treatment of the Florentine or Roman schools. A love of
picturesque variety in masses and sky-lines, inherited from mediæval
times, appears in the high roofs, stepped gables and lofty dormers which
are universal. The roofs often comprise several stories, and are lighted
by lofty gables at either end, and by dormers carried up from the side
walls through two or three stories. Gables and dormers alike are built
in diminishing stages, each step adorned with a console or scroll, and
the whole treated with pilasters or colonnettes and entablatures
breaking over each support (Fig. 191). These roofs, dormers, and gables
contribute the most noticeable element to the general effect of most
German Renaissance buildings, and are commonly the best-designed
features in them. The orders are scantily used and usually treated with
utter disregard of classic canons, being generally far too massive and
overloaded with ornament. Oriels, bay-windows, and turrets, starting
from corbels or colonnettes, or rarely from the ground, diversify the
façade, and spires of curious bulbous patterns give added piquancy to
the picturesque sky-line. The plans seldom had the monumental symmetry
and largeness of Italian and French models; courtyards were often
irregular in shape and diversified with balconies and spiral
staircase-turrets. The national leaning was always toward the quaint and
fantastic, as well in the decoration as in the composition. Grotesques,
caryatids, _gaînes_ (half-figures terminating below in sheath-like
supports), fanciful rustication, and many other details give a touch of
the Baroque even to works of early date. The same principles were
applied with better success to interior decoration, especially in the
large halls of the castles and town-halls, and many of their ceilings
were sumptuous and well-considered designs, deeply panelled, painted and
gilded in wood or plaster.
+CASTLES.+ The _Schloss_ or _Burg_ of the German prince or duke retained
throughout the Renaissance many mediæval characteristics in plan and
aspect. A large proportion of these noble residences were built upon
foundations of demolished feudal castles, reproducing in a new dress the
ancient round towers and vaulted guard-rooms and halls, as in the
Hartenfels at Torgau, the Heldburg (both in Saxony), and the castle of
Trausnitz, in Bavaria, among many others. The +Castle+ at +Torgau+
(1540) is one of the most imposing of its class, with massive round and
square towers showing externally, and court façades full of picturesque
irregularities. In the great +Castle+ at +Dresden+ the plan is more
symmetrical, and the Renaissance appears more distinctly in the details
of the Georgenflügel (1530-50), though at that early date the classic
orders were almost ignored. The portal of the Heldburg, however, built
in 1562, is a composition quite in the contemporary French vein, with
superposed orders and a crowning pediment over a massive basement.
Another important series of castles or palaces are of more regular
design, in which the feudal traditions tend to disappear. The majority
belong to the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. They
are built around large rectangular courts with arcades in two or three
stories on one or more sides, but rarely surrounding it entirely. In
these the segmental arch is more common than the semicircular, and
springs usually from short and stumpy Ionic or Corinthian columns. The
rooms and halls are arranged _en suite_, without corridors, and a large
and lofty banquet hall forms the dominant feature of the series. The
earliest of these regularly planned palaces are of Italian design. Chief
among them is the +Residenz+ at +Landshut+ (1536-43), with a thoroughly
Roman plan, by pupils of Giulio Romano, and exterior and court façades
of great dignity treated with the orders. More German in its details,
but equally interesting, is the +Fürstenhof+ at +Wismar+, in brick and
terra-cotta, by _Valentino di Lira_ and _Van Aken_ (1553); while in the
+Piastenschloss+ at Brieg (1547-72), by Italian architects, the
treatment in parts suggests the richest works of the style of Francis I.
In other castles the segmental arch and stumpy columns or piers show the
German taste, as in the +Plassenburg+, by _Kaspar Vischer_ (1554-64),
the castle at Plagnitz, and the +Old Castle+ at +Stuttgart+, all dating
from about 1550-55. +Heidelberg Castle+, in spite of its mediæval aspect
from the river and its irregular plan, ranks as the highest achievement
of the German Renaissance in palace design. The most interesting parts
among its various wings built at different dates--the earlier portions
still Gothic in design--are the +Otto Heinrichsbau+ (1554) and the
+Friedrichsbau+ (1601). The first of these appears somewhat simpler in
its lines than the second, by reason of having lost its original
dormer-gables. The orders, freely treated, are superposed in three
stories, and twin windows, niches, statues, _gaînes_, medallions and
profuse carving produce an effect of great gayety and richness. The
Friedrichsbau (Fig. 192), less quiet in its lines, and with high
scroll-gabled and stepped dormers, is on the other hand more soberly
decorated and more characteristically German. The Schloss Hämelschenburg
(Fig. 191) is designed in somewhat the same spirit, but with even
greater simplicity of detail.
[Illustration: FIG. 192.--THE FRIEDRICHSBAU, HEIDELBERG.]
+TOWN HALLS.+ These constitute the most interesting class of Renaissance
buildings in Germany, presenting a considerable variety of types, but
nearly all built in solid blocks without courts, and adorned with towers
or spires. A high roof crowns the building, broken by one or more high
gables or many-storied dormers. The majority of these town halls present
façades much diversified by projecting wings, as at Lemgo and Paderborn,
or by oriels and turrets, as at +Altenburg+ (1562-64); and the towers
which dominate the whole terminate usually in bell-shaped cupolas, or in
more capricious forms with successive swellings and contractions, as at
Dantzic (1587). A few, however, are designed with monumental simplicity
of mass; of these that at +Bremen+ (1612) is perhaps the finest, with
its beautiful exterior arcade on strong Doric columns. The town hall of
Nuremberg is one of the few with a court, and presents a façade of
almost Roman simplicity (1613-19); that at +Augsburg+ (1615) is equally
classic and more pleasing; while at Schweinfurt, Rothenburg (1572),
Mülhausen, etc., are others worthy of mention.
+CHURCHES.+ +St. Michael’s+, at Munich, is almost the only important
church of the first period in Germany (1582), but it is worthy to rank
with many of the most notable contemporary Italian churches. A wide nave
covered by a majestic barrel vault, is flanked by side chapels,
separated from each other by massive piers and forming a series of
gallery bays above. There are short transepts and a choir, all in
excellent proportion and treated with details which, if somewhat heavy,
are appropriate and reasonably correct. The +Marienkirche+ at
Wolfenbüttel (1608) is a fair sample of the parish churches of the
second period. In the exterior of this church pointed arches and
semi-Gothic tracery are curiously associated with heavy rococo carving.
The simple rectangular mass, square tower, and portal with massive
orders and carving are characteristic features. Many of the
church-towers are well proportioned and graceful structures in spite of
the fantastic outlines of their spires. One of the best and purest in
style is that of the University Church at Würzburg (1587-1600).
[Illustration: FIG. 193.--ZWINGER PALACE, DRESDEN.]
+HOUSES.+ Many of the German houses of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries would merit extended notice in a larger work, as among the
most interesting lesser monuments of the Renaissance. Nuremberg and
Hildesheim are particularly rich in such houses, built either for
private citizens or for guilds and corporations. Not a few of the
half-timbered houses of the time are genuine works of art, though
interest chiefly centres in the more monumental dwellings of stone. In
this domestic architecture the picturesque quality of German design
appears to better advantage than in more monumental edifices, and their
broadly stepped gables, corbelled oriels, florid portals and want of
formal symmetry imparting a peculiar and undeniable charm. The
Kaiserhaus and Wedekindsches Haus at Hildesheim; +Fürstenhaus+ at
Leipzig; Peller, Hirschvogel, and Funk houses at Nuremberg; the Salt
House at Frankfurt, and Ritter House at Heidelberg, are a few of the
most noted among these examples of domestic architecture.
[Illustration: FIG. 194.--CHURCH OF ST. MARY (MARIENKIRCHE),
DRESDEN.]
+LATER MONUMENTS.+ The +Zwinger Palace+ at Dresden (Fig. 193), is the
most elaborate and wayward example of the German palace architecture of
the third period. Its details are of the most exaggerated rococo type,
like confectioner’s work done in stone; and yet the building has an air
of princely splendor which partly atones for its details. Besides this
palace, Dresden possesses in the domical +Marienkirche+ (Fig. 194)
a very meritorious example of late design. The proportions are good, and
the detail, if not interesting, is at least inoffensive, while the whole
is a dignified and rational piece of work. At Vienna are a number of
palaces of the third period, more interesting for their beautiful
grounds and parks than for intrinsic architectural merit. As in Italy,
this was the period of stucco, and although in Vienna this cheap and
perishable material was cleverly handled, and the ornament produced was
often quaint and effective, the results lack the permanence and dignity
of true building in stone or brick, and may be dismissed without further
mention.
In minor works the Germans were far less prolific than the Italians or
Spaniards. Few of their tombs were of the first importance, though one,
the +Sebald Shrine+, in Nuremberg, by _Peter Vischer_ (1506-19), is a
splendid work in bronze, in the transitional style; a richly decorated
canopy on slender metal colonnettes covering and enclosing the
sarcophagus of the saint. There are a large number of fountains in the
squares of German and Swiss cities which display a high order of design,
and are among the most characteristic minor products of German art.
+SPAIN.+ The flamboyant Gothic style sufficed for a while to meet the
requirements of the arrogant and luxurious period which in Spain
followed the overthrow of the Moors and the discovery of America. But it
was inevitable that the Renaissance should in time make its influence
felt in the arts of the Iberian peninsula, largely through the
employment of Flemish artists. In jewelry and silverwork, arts which
received a great impulse from the importation of the precious metals
from the New World, the forms of the Renaissance found special
acceptance, so that the new style received the name of the _Plateresque_
(from _platero_, silversmith). This was a not inept name for the
minutely detailed and sumptuous decoration of the early Renaissance,
which lasted from 1500 to the accession of Philip II. in 1556. It was
characterized by surface-decoration spreading over broad areas,
especially around doors and windows, florid escutcheons and Gothic
details mingling with delicately chiselled arabesques. Decorative
pilasters with broken entablatures and carved baluster-shafts were
employed with little reference to constructive lines, but with great
refinement of detail, in spite of the exuberant profusion of the
ornament.
To this style, after the artistic inaction of Philip II.’s reign,
succeeded the coldly classic style practised by _Berruguete_ and
_Herrera_, and called the _Griego-Romano_. In spite of the attempt to
produce works of classical purity, the buildings of this period are for
the most part singularly devoid of originality and interest. This style
lasted until the middle of the seventeenth century, and in the case of
certain works and artists, until its close. It was followed, at least in
ecclesiastical architecture, by the so-called _Churrigueresque_, a name
derived from an otherwise insignificant architect, _Churriguera_, who
like Maderna and Borromini in Italy, discarded all the proprieties of
architecture, and rejoiced in the wildest extravagances of an untrained
fancy and debased taste.
+EARLY MONUMENTS.+ The earliest ecclesiastical works of the Renaissance
period, like the cathedrals of Salamanca, Toledo, and Segovia, were
almost purely Gothic in style. Not until 1525 did the new forms begin to
dominate in cathedral design. The cathedral at +Jaen+, by _Valdelvira_
(1525), an imposing structure with three aisles and side chapels, was
treated internally with the Corinthian order throughout. The Cathedral
of +Granada+ (1529, by _Diego de Siloe_) is especially interesting for
its great domical sanctuary 70 feet in diameter, and for the largeness
and dignity of its conception and details. The cathedral of Malaga, the
church of San Domingo at Salamanca, and the monastery of San Girolamo in
the same city are either wholly or in part Plateresque, and provided
with portals of especial richness of decoration. Indeed, the portal of
S. Domingo practically forms the whole façade.
[Illustration: FIG. 195.--DOOR OF THE UNIVERSITY, SALAMANCA.]
In secular architecture the +Hospital+ of +Santa Cruz+ at Toledo, by
_Enrique de Egaz_ (1504-16), is one of the earliest examples of the
style. Here, as also in the +University+ at +Salamanca+ (Fig. 195), the
portal is the most notable feature, suggesting both Italian and French
models in its details. The great +College+ at +Alcala de Heñares+ is
another important early monument of the Renaissance (1500-17, by _Pedro
Gumiel_). In most designs the preference was for long façades of
moderate height, with a basement showing few openings, and a _bel étage_
lighted by large windows widely spaced. Ornament was chiefly
concentrated about the doors and windows, except for the roof
balustrades, which were often exceedingly elaborate. Occasionally a
decorative motive is spread over the whole façade, as in the +Casa de
las Conchas+ at Salamanca, adorned with cockle-shells carved at
intervals all over the front--a bold and effective device; or the
Infantada palace with its spangling of carved diamonds. The courtyard or
_patio_ was an indispensable feature of these buildings, as in all hot
countries, and was surrounded by arcades frequently of the most fanciful
design overloaded with minute ornament, as in the +Infantado+ at
Guadalajara, the +Casa de Zaporta+, formerly at Saragossa (now removed
to Paris; Fig. 196), and the Lupiana monastery. The patios in the
+Archbishop’s Palace+ at Alcala de Heñares and the +Collegio de los
Irlandeses+ at Salamanca are of simpler design; that of the +Casa de
Pilatos+ at Seville is almost purely Moorish. Salamanca abounds in
buildings of this period.
[Illustration: FIG. 196.--CASA DE ZAPORTA: COURTYARD.]
[Illustration: FIG. 197.--PALACE OF CHARLES V., GRANADA.]
+THE GRIEGO-ROMANO.+ The more classic treatment of architectural designs
by the use of the orders was introduced by _Alonzo Berruguete_
(1480-1560?), who studied in Italy after 1503. The Archbishop’s Palace
and the Doric +Gate+ of +San Martino+, both at Toledo, were his work, as
well as the first palace at Madrid. The Palladio of Spain was, however,
by _Juan de Herrera_ (died 1597), the architect of +Valladolid
Cathedral+, built under Philip V. This vast edifice follows the general
lines of the earlier cathedrals of Jaen and Granada, but in a style of
classical correctness almost severe in aspect, but well suited to the
grand scale of the church. The masterpiece of this period was the
monastery of the +Escurial+, begun by _Juan Battista_ of Toledo, in
1563, but not completed until nearly one hundred and fifty years later.
Its final architectural aspect was largely due to Herrera. It is a vast
rectangle of 740 × 580 feet, comprising a complex of courts, halls, and
cells, dominated by the huge mass of the chapel. This last is an
imposing domical church covering 70,000 square feet, treated throughout
with the Doric order, and showing externally a lofty dome and campaniles
with domical lanterns, which serve to diversify the otherwise monotonous
mass of the monastery. What the Escurial lacks in grace or splendor is
at least in a measure redeemed by its majestic scale and varied
sky-lines. The +Palace of Charles V.+ (Fig. 197), adjoining the Alhambra
at Granada, though begun as early as 1527 by _Machuca_, was mainly due
to Berruguete, and is an excellent example of the Spanish Palladian
style. With its circular court, admirable proportions and well-studied
details, this often maligned edifice deserves to be ranked among the
most successful examples of the style. During this period the cathedral
of Seville received many alterations, and the upper part of the
adjoining Moorish tower of the +Giralda+, burned in 1395, was rebuilt by
_Fernando Ruiz_ in the prevalent style, and with considerable elegance
and appropriateness of design.
Of the +Palace+ at +Madrid+, rebuilt by Philip V. after the burning of
the earlier palace in 1734, and mainly the work of an Italian, _Ivara_;
the Aranjuez palace (1739, by _Francisco Herrera_), and the Palace at
+San Ildefonso+, it need only be said that their chief merit lies in
their size and the absence of those glaring violations of good taste
which generally characterized the successors of Churriguera. In
ecclesiastical design these violations of taste were particularly
abundant and excessive, especially in the façades and in the
sanctuary--huge aggregations of misplaced and vulgar detail, with hardly
an unbroken pediment, column, or arch in the whole. Some extreme
examples of this abominable style are to be found in the
Spanish-American churches of the 17th and 18th centuries, as at
Chihuahua (Mexico), Tucson (Arizona), and other places. The least
offensive features of the churches of this period were the towers,
usually in pairs at the west end, some of them showing excellent
proportions and good composition in spite of their execrable details.
Minor architectural works, such as the rood screens in the churches of
Astorga and Medina de Rio Seco, and many tombs at Granada, Avila,
Alcala, etc., give evidence of superior skill in decorative design,
where constructive considerations did not limit the exercise of the
imagination.
+PORTUGAL.+ The Renaissance appears to have produced few notable works
in Portugal. Among the chief of these are the +Tower+, the church, and
the +Cloister+, at Belem. These display a riotous profusion of minute
carved ornament, with a free commingling of late Gothic details,
wearisome in the end in spite of the beauty of its execution (1500-40?).
The church of +Santa Cruz+ at Coimbra, and that of +Luz+, near Lisbon,
are among the most noted of the religious monuments of the Renaissance,
while in secular architecture the royal palace at +Mafra+ is worthy of
mention.
+MONUMENTS.+ (Mainly supplementary to preceding text.) AUSTRIA,
BOHEMIA, etc.: At Prague, Schloss Stern, 1459-1565; Schwarzenburg
Palace, 1544; Waldstein Palace, 1629; Salvator Chapel, Vienna,
1515; Schloss Schalaburg, near Mölk, 1530-1601; Standehaus, Gratz,
1625. At Vienna: Imperial palace, various dates; Schwarzenburg and
Lichtenstein palaces, 18th century.
GERMANY, FIRST PERIOD: Schloss Baden, 1510-29 and part 1569-82;
Schloss Merseburg, 1514, with late 16th-century portals;
Fuggerhaus at Augsburg, 1516; castles of Neuenstein, 1530-64;
Celle, 1532-46 (and enlarged, 1665-70); Dessau, 1533; Leignitz,
portal, 1533; Plagnitz, 1550; Schloss Gottesau, 1553-88; castle of
Güstrow, 1555-65; of Oels, 1559-1616; of Bernburg, 1565; of
Heiligenburg, 1569-87; Münzhof at Munich, 1575; Lusthaus
(demolished) at Stuttgart, 1575; Wilhelmsburg Castle at
Schmalkald, 1584-90; castle of Hämelschenburg, 1588-1612.--SECOND
PERIOD: Zunfthaus at Basle, 1578, in advanced style; so also
Juleum at Helmstädt, 1593-1612; gymnasium at Brunswick, 1592-1613;
Spiesshof at Basle, 1600; castle at Berlin, 1600-1616, demolished
in great part; castle Bevern, 1603; Dantzic, Zeughaus, 1605;
Wallfahrtskirche at Dettelbach, 1613; castle Aschaffenburg,
1605-13; Schloss Weikersheim, 1600-83.--THIRD PERIOD: Zeughaus at
Berlin, 1695; palace at Berlin by Schlüter, 1699-1706; Catholic
church, Dresden. (For Classic Revival, see next chapter.)--TOWN
HALLS: At Heilbronn, 1535; Görlitz, 1537; Posen, 1550; Mülhausen,
1552; Cologne, porch with Corinthian columns and Gothic arches,
1569; Lübeck (Rathhaushalle), 1570; Schweinfurt, 1570; Gotha,
1574; Emden, 1574-76; Lemgo, 1589; Neisse, 1604; Nordhausen, 1610;
Paderborn, 1612-16; Gernsbach, 1617.
SPAIN, 16TH CENTURY: Monastery San Marcos at Leon; palace of the
Infanta, Saragossa; Carcel del Corte at Baez; Cath. of Malaga, W.
front, 1538, by de Siloë; Tavera Hospital, Toledo, 1541, by de
Bustamente; Alcazar at Toledo, 1548; Lonja (Town Hall) at
Saragossa, 1551; Casa de la Sal, Casa Monterey, and Collegio de
los Irlandeses, all at Salamanca; Town Hall, Casa de los Taveras
and upper part of Giralda, all at Seville.--17TH CENTURY:
Cathedral del Pilar, Saragossa, 1677; Tower del Seo, 1685.--18TH
CENTURY: palace at Madrid, 1735; at Aranjuez, 1739; cathedral of
Santiago, 1738; Lonja at Barcelona, 1772.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE CLASSIC REVIVALS IN EUROPE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson. Also Chateau, _Histoire
et caractères de l’architecture en France_; and Lübke, _Geschichte
der Architektur_. (For the most part, however, recourse must be
had to the general histories of architecture, and to monographs on
special cities or buildings.)
+THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.+ By the end of the seventeenth century the
Renaissance, properly speaking, had run its course in Europe. The
increasing servility of its imitation of antique models had exhausted
its elasticity and originality. Taste rapidly declined before the growth
of the industrial and commercial spirit in the eighteenth century. The
ferment of democracy and the disquiet of far-reaching political changes
had begun to preoccupy the minds of men to the detriment of the arts. By
the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the extravagances of the
Rococo, Jesuit, and Louis XV. styles had begun to pall upon the popular
taste. The creative spirit was dead, and nothing seemed more promising
as a corrective for these extravagances than a return to classic models.
But the demand was for a literal copying of the arcades and porticos of
Rome, to serve as frontispieces for buildings in which modern
requirements should be accommodated to these antique exteriors, instead
of controlling the design. The result was a manifest gain in the
splendor of the streets and squares adorned by these highly decorative
frontispieces, but at the expense of convenience and propriety in the
buildings themselves. While this academic spirit too often sacrificed
logic and originality to an arbitrary symmetry and to the supposed
canons of Roman design, it also, on the other hand, led to a stateliness
and dignity in the planning, especially in the designing of vestibules,
stairs, and halls, which render many of the public buildings it produced
well worthy of study. The architecture of the Roman Revival was pompous
and artificial, but seldom trivial, and its somewhat affected grandeur
was a welcome relief from the dull extravagance of the styles it
replaced.
+THE GREEK REVIVAL.+ The Roman revival was, however, displaced in
England and Germany by the Greek Revival, which set in near the close of
the eighteenth century. This was the result of a newly awakened interest
in the long-neglected monuments of Attic art which the discoveries of
Stuart and Revett--sent out in 1732 by the London Society of
Dilettanti--had once more made known to the world. It led to a veritable
_furore_ in England for Greek Doric and Ionic columns, which were
applied indiscriminately to every class of buildings, with utter
disregard of propriety. The British taste was at this time at its lowest
ebb, and failed to perceive the poverty of Greek architecture when
deprived of its proper adornments of carving and sculpture, which were
singularly lacking in the British examples. Nevertheless the Greek style
in England had a long run of popular favor, yielding only during the
reign of the present sovereign to the so-called Victorian Gothic,
a revival of mediæval forms. In Germany the Greek Revival was
characterized by a more cultivated taste and a more rational application
of its forms, which were often freely modified to suit modern needs. In
France, where the Roman Revival under Louis XV. had produced fairly
satisfactory results, and where the influence of the Royal School of
Fine Arts (_École des Beaux-Arts_) tended to perpetuate the principles
of Roman design, the Greek Revival found no footing. The Greek forms
were seen to be too severe and intractable for present requirements.
About 1830, however, a modified style of design, known since as the
_Néo-Grec_, was introduced by the exertions of a small coterie of
talented architects; and though its own life was short, it profoundly
influenced French art in the direction of freedom and refinement for a
long time afterward. In Italy there was hardly anything in the nature of
a true revival of either Roman or Greek forms. The few important works
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were conceived in
the spirit of the late Renaissance, and took from the prevalent revival
of classicism elsewhere merely a greater correctness of detail, not any
radical change of form or spirit.
[Illustration: FIG. 198.--BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON.]
+ENGLAND.+ There was, strictly speaking, no Roman revival in Great
Britain. The modified Palladian style of Wren and Gibbs and their
successors continued until superseded by the Greek revival. The first
fruit of the new movement seems to have been the +Bank of England+ at
London, by _Sir John Soane_ (1788). In this edifice the Greco-Roman
order of the round temple at Tivoli was closely copied, and applied to a
long façade, too low for its length and with no sufficient stylobate,
but fairly effective with its recessed colonnade and unpierced walls.
The +British Museum+, by _Robert Smirke_ (Fig. 198), was a more
ambitious essay in a more purely Greek style. Its colossal Ionic
colonnade was, however, a mere frontispiece, applied to a badly planned
and commonplace building, from which it cut off needed light. The more
modest but appropriate columnar façade to the +Fitzwilliam Museum+ at
Cambridge, by _Bassevi_, was a more successful attempt in the same
direction, better proportioned and avoiding the incongruity of modern
windows in several stories. These have always been the stumbling-block
of the revived Greek style. The difficulties they raise are avoided,
however, in buildings presenting but two stories, the order being
applied to the upper story, upon a high stylobate serving as a basement.
The +High School+ and the Royal Institution at Edinburgh, and the
University at London, by _Wilkins_, are for this reason, if for no
other, superior to the British Museum and other many-storied Anglo-Greek
edifices. In spite of all difficulties, however, the English extended
the applications of the style with doubtful success not only to all
manner of public buildings, but also to country residences. Carlton
House, Bowden Park, and Grange House are instances of this
misapplication of Greek forms. Neither did it prove more tractable for
ecclesiastical purposes. +St. Pancras’s+ Church at London, and several
churches by _Thomson_ (1817-75), in Glasgow, though interesting as
experiments in such adaptation, are not to be commended for imitation.
The most successful of all British Greek designs is perhaps +St.
George’s Hall+ at Liverpool (Fig. 199), whose imposing peristyle and
porches are sufficiently Greek in spirit and detail to class it among
the works of the Greek Revival. But its great hall and its interior
composition are really Roman and not Greek, emphasizing the teaching of
experience that Greek architecture does not lend itself to the
exigencies of modern civilization to nearly the same extent as the
Roman.
[Illustration: FIG. 199.--ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LIVERPOOL.]
[Illustration: FIG. 200.--THE OLD MUSEUM, BERLIN.]
+GERMANY.+ During the eighteenth century the classic revival in Germany,
which at first followed Roman precedents (as in the columns carved with
spirally ascending reliefs in front of the church of +St. Charles
Borromeo+, at Vienna), was directed into the channel of Greek imitation
by the literary works of Winckelmann, Lessing, Goethe, and others, as
well as by the interest aroused by the discoveries of Stuart and Revett.
The +Brandenburg Gate+ at Berlin (1784, by Langhans) was an early
example of this Hellenism in architecture, and one of its most
successful applications to civic purposes. Without precisely copying any
Greek structure, it was evidently inspired from the Athenian Propylæa,
and nothing in its purpose is foreign to the style employed. The
greatest activity in the style came later, however, and was greatly
stimulated by the achievements of _Fr. Schinkel_ (1771-1841), one of the
greatest of modern German architects. While in the domical church of St.
Nicholas at Potsdam, he employed Roman forms in a modernized Roman
conception, and followed in one or two other buildings the principles of
the Renaissance, his predilections were for Greek architecture. His
masterpiece was the +Museum+ at Berlin, with an imposing portico of 18
Ionic columns (Fig. 200). This building with its fine rotunda was
excellently planned, and forms, in conjunction with the +New Museum+ by
_Stuhler_ (1843-55), a noble palace of art, to whose monumental
requirements and artistic purpose the Greek colonnades and pediments
were not inappropriate. Schinkel’s greatest successor was _Leo von
Klenze_ (1784-1864), whose more textual reproductions of Greek models
won him great favor and wide employment. The +Walhalla+ near Ratisbon is
a modernized Parthenon, internally vaulted with glass; elegant
externally, but too obvious a plagiarism to be greatly admired. The
+Ruhmeshalle+ at Munich, a double +L+ partly enclosing a colossal
statue of Bavaria, and devoted to the commemoration of Bavaria’s great
men, is copied from no Greek building, though purely Greek in design and
correct to the smallest detail. In the +Glyptothek+ (Sculpture Gallery),
in the same city, the one distinctively Greek feature introduced by
Klenze, an Ionic portico, is also the one inappropriate note in the
design. The +Propylæa+ at Munich, by the same (Fig. 201), and the +Court
Theatre+ at Berlin, by Schinkel, are other important examples of the
style. The latter is externally one of the most beautiful theatres in
Europe, though less ornate than many. Schinkel’s genius was here
remarkably successful in adapting Greek details to the exigent
difficulties of theatre design, and there is no suggestion of copying
any known Greek building.
[Illustration: FIG. 201.--THE PROPYLÆA, MUNICH.]
In Vienna the one notable monument of the Classic Revival is the
+Reichsrathsgebäude+ or Parliament House, by _Th. Hansen_ (1843), an
imposing two-storied composition with a lofty central colonnade and
lower side-wings, harmonious in general proportions and pleasingly
varied in outline and mass.
In general, the Greek Revival in Germany presents the aspect of a
sincere striving after beauty, on the part of a limited number of
artists of great talent, misled by the idea that the forms of a dead
civilization could be galvanized into new life in the service of modern
needs. The result was disappointing, in spite of the excellent planning,
admirable construction and carefully studied detail of these buildings,
and the movement here as elsewhere was foredoomed to failure.
[Illustration: FIG. 202.--PLAN OF PANTHÉON, PARIS.]
+FRANCE.+ In France the Classic Revival, as we have seen, had made its
appearance during the reign of Louis XV. in a number of important
monuments which expressed the protest of their authors against the
caprice of the Rococo style then in vogue. The colonnades of the
Garde-Meuble, the façade of St. Sulpice, and the coldly beautiful
+Panthéon+ (Figs. 202, 203) testified to the conviction in the most
cultured minds of the time that Roman grandeur was to be attained only
by copying the forms of Roman architecture with the closest possible
approach to correctness. In the Panthéon, the greatest ecclesiastical
monument of its time in France (otherwise known as the church of Ste.
Genéviève), the spirit of correct classicism dominates the interior as
well as the exterior. It is a Greek cross, measuring 362 × 267 feet,
with a dome 265 feet high, and internally 69 feet in diameter. The four
arms have domical vaulting and narrow aisles separated by Corinthian
columns. The whole interior is a cold but extremely elegant composition.
The most notable features of the exterior are its imposing portico of
colossal Corinthian columns and the fine peristyle which surrounds the
drum of the dome, giving it great dignity and richness of effect.
[Illustration: FIG. 203.--EXTERIOR OF PANTHÉON, PARIS.]
[Illustration: FIG. 204.--ARC DE L’ÉTOILE, PARIS.]
The dome, which is of stone throughout, has three shells, the
intermediate shell serving to support the heavy stone lantern. The
architect was _Soufflot_ (1713-81). The +Grand Théâtre+, at Bordeaux
(1773, by _Victor Louis_), one of the largest and finest theatres in
Europe, was another product of this movement, its stately colonnade
forming one of the chief ornaments of the city. Under Louis XVI. there
was a temporary reaction from this somewhat pompous affectation of
antique grandeur; but there were few important buildings erected during
that unhappy reign, and the reaction showed itself mainly in a more
delicate and graceful style of interior decoration. It was reserved for
the Empire to set the seal of official approval on the Roman Revival.
The Arch of Triumph of the Carrousel, behind the Tuileries, by _Percier
and Fontaine_, the magnificent Arc de l’Étoile, at the summit of the
Avenue of the Champs Elysées, by _Chalgrin_; the wing begun by Napoleon
to connect the Tuileries with the Louvre on the land side, and the
church of the Madeleine, by _Vignon_, erected as a temple to the heroes
of the Grande Armée, were all designed, in accordance with the expressed
will of the Emperor himself, in a style as Roman as the requirements of
each case would permit. All these monuments, begun between 1806 and
1809, were completed after the Restoration. The +Arch+ of the
+Carrousel+ is a close copy of Roman models; that of the +Étoile+ (Fig.
204) was a much more original design, of colossal dimensions. Its
admirable proportions, simple composition and striking sculptures give
it a place among the noblest creations of its class. The +Madeleine+
(Fig. 205), externally a Roman Corinthian temple of the largest size,
presents internally an almost Byzantine conception with the three
pendentive domes that vault its vast nave, but all the details are
Roman. However suitable for a pantheon or mausoleum, it seems strangely
inappropriate as a design for a Christian church. To these monuments
should be added the +Bourse+ or Exchange, by _Brongniart_, heavy in
spite of its Corinthian peristyle, and the river front of the +Corps
Législatif+ or Palais Bourbon, by _Poyet_, the only extant example of a
dodecastyle portico with a pediment. All of these designs are
characterized by great elegance of detail and excellence of execution,
and however inappropriate in style to modern uses, they add immensely to
the splendor of the French capital. Unquestionably no feature can take
the place of a Greek or Roman colonnade as an embellishment for broad
avenues and open squares, or as the termination of an architectural
vista.
[Illustration: FIG. 205.--THE MADELEINE, PARIS.]
The Greek revival took little hold of the Parisian imagination. Its
forms were too cold, too precise and fixed, too intractable to modern
requirements to appeal to the French taste. It counts but one notable
monument, the church of +St. Vincent de Paul+, by _Hittorff_, who sought
to apply to this design the principles of Greek external polychromy; but
the frescoes and ornaments failed to withstand the Parisian climate, and
were finally erased. The Néo-Grec movement already referred to,
initiated by Duc, Duban, and Labrouste about 1830, aimed only to
introduce into modern design the spirit and refinement, the purity and
delicacy of Greek art, not its forms (Fig. 206). Its chief monuments
were the remodelling, by _Duc_, of the +Palais de Justice+, of which the
new west façade is the most striking single feature; the beautiful
+Library of the École des Beaux-Arts+, by _Duban_; the library of +Ste.
Genéviève+, by _Labrouste_, in which a long façade is treated without a
pilaster or column, simple arches over a massive basement forming the
dominant motive, while in the interior a system of iron construction
with glazed domes controls the design; and the commemorative +Colonne
Juillet+, by Duc, the most elegant and appropriate of all modern
memorial columns. All these buildings, begun between 1830 and 1850 and
completed at various dates, are distinguished by a remarkable purity and
freedom of conception and detail, quite unfettered by the artificial
trammels of the official academic style then prevalent.
[Illustration: FIG. 206.--DOORWAY, ÉCOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS.]
+THE CLASSIC REVIVAL ELSEWHERE.+ The other countries of Europe have
little to show in the way of imitations of classic monuments or
reproductions of Roman colonnades. In Italy the church of +S. Francesco
di Paola+, at Naples, in quasi-imitation of the Pantheon at Rome, with
wing-colonnades, and the +Superga+, at Turin (1706, by _Ivara_); the
façade of the San Carlo Theatre, at Naples, and the Braccio Nuovo of the
Vatican (1817, by _Stern_) are the monuments which come the nearest to
the spirit and style of the Roman Revival. Yet in each of these there is
a large element of originality and freedom of treatment which renders
doubtful their classification as examples of that movement.
A reflection of the Munich school is seen in the modern public buildings
of Athens, designed in some cases by German architects, and in others by
native Greeks. The University, the Museum buildings, the Academy of Art
and Science, and other edifices exemplify fairly successful efforts to
adapt the severe details of classic Greek art to modern windowed
structures. They suffer somewhat from the too liberal use of stucco in
place of marble, and from the conscious affectation of an extinct style.
But they are for the most part pleasing and monumental designs, adding
greatly to the beauty of the modern city.
[Illustration: FIG. 207.--ST. ISAAC’S CATHEDRAL, ST. PETERSBURG.]
In Russia, during and after the reign of Peter the Great (1689-1725),
there appeared a curious mixture of styles. A style analogous to the
Jesuit in Italy and the Churrigueresque in Spain was generally
prevalent, but it was in many cases modified by Muscovite traditions
into nondescript forms like those of the +Kremlin+, at Moscow, or the
less extravagant Citadel Church and Smolnoy Monastery at St. Petersburg.
Along with this heavy and barbarous style, which prevails generally in
the numerous palaces of the capital, finished in stucco with atrocious
details, a more severe and classical spirit is met with. The church of
the +Greek Rite+ at St. Petersburg combines a Roman domical interior
with an exterior of the Greek Doric order. The Church of +Our Lady of
Kazan+ has a semicircular colonnade projecting from its transept,
copying as nearly as may be the colonnades in front of St. Peter’s. But
the greatest classic monument in Russia is the +Cathedral of St. Isaac+
(Fig. 207), at St. Petersburg, a vast rectangular edifice with four
Roman Corinthian pedimental colonnades projecting from its faces, and a
dome with a peristyle crowning the whole. Despite many defects of
detail, and the use of cast iron for the dome, which pretends to be of
marble, this is one of the most impressive churches of its size in
Europe. Internally it displays the costliest materials in extraordinary
profusion, while externally its noble colonnades go far to redeem its
bare attic and the material of its dome. The +Palace of the Grand Duke
Michael+, which reproduces, with improvements, Gabriel’s colonnades of
the Garde Meuble at Paris on its garden front, is a nobly planned and
commendable design, agreeably contrasting with the debased architecture
of many of the public buildings of the city. The Admiralty with its
Doric pilasters, and the +New Museum+, by von Klenze of Munich, in a
skilfully modified Greek style, with effective loggias, are the only
other monuments of the classic revival in Russia which can find mention
in a brief sketch like this. Both are notable and in many respects
admirable buildings, in part redeeming the vulgarity which is
unfortunately so prevalent in the architecture of St. Petersburg.