How to Study Architecture

enthusiasm of the truly Gothic architect. He treated the edifice as a shell to be enriched with decoration.

In the interior, the walls and vaultings offered surfaces for painting. When this was accomplished as, for example, in the frescoes by Cimabue, Giotto, and others in the Church of S. Francis in Assisi, by Giotto in the Arena Chapel, Padua, and the chapels of the Perozzi and Bardi in S. Croce, Florence, and in S. Maria Novella, possibly by Taddeo Gaddi, or at any rate by some painter of the school of Giotto, the effect is incomparably resplendent. Where, however, as in the Cathedral of Florence, frescoes are missing, the appearance is cold and barren; redeemed somewhat, it is true, in this case by the colossal dimensions and sense of spaciousness.

For the exteriors reliance was placed upon applied embellishments. The side walls, for example, of Florence are veneered with marble; those of Siena and Orvieto with horizontal stripes of black and white masonry. But this colour decoration is a poor substitute for the structural enrichments, the traceried windows, flying buttresses, and mounting roofs of the true Gothic.

The Italians concentrated chief ornateness on the west façade; the most celebrated examples being those of Siena (1243-1284) and Orvieto (1290). They present elaborate compositions of vari-coloured marble, charmingly diversified, nicely balanced, sumptuously elegant and graceful. But compare, for example, Siena with, say, Rheims or Amiens, and how it sinks into insignificance!

In the French examples the pointed door-arches start an upward movement which is continued to the top in the organic relations of the parts to one another and to the interior arrangement. But in the Siena façade, the round arches hold the eye down; for their feeling is not repeated in the upper part, which, notwithstanding the gables, turrets, finials, and culminating gable, has no suggestion of growth-up, but is rather a geometric design of curves and triangles, horizontals and verticals, carried up to a height. It is not organically structural; it is a built-up pattern. The designer was a sculptor—Giovanni Pisano.

Campanile.—The campanile is usually attached to the building. In place of string courses and mouldings are alternate courses of black and white masonry; the sole contrast being supplied by the rectangular window openings, which, possibly to offset the diminishing effect of perspective, increase in number upwards. The low spire is typically Italian Romanesque.

Fine examples of the period are to be found in Verona, Mantua, and Pistoia, while the most beautiful is that of Florence, designed and begun by Giotto and completed after his death by Andrea Pisano. It is distinguished from other bell-towers of the Italian Gothic by the projections which mark its four stories and the bold cornice with machicolated ornament. The surface is further varied with geometric designs, composed of coloured marbles; while the windows are embellished with tracery of an elementary design, corresponding to that of the adjoining Cathedral windows. The sides of the lowest story, broken only by a small light, are enriched with statues and bas-reliefs, some of which were designed by Giotto and executed partly by him and partly by Andrea Pisano, others being added later by Luca della Robbia. In character of subjects they correspond to the selections at Amiens from the Encyclopædia of Vincent of Beauvais. Ruskin says of this building that it is the only one in the world, so far as he knows, in which the characteristics of Power and Beauty exist “in their highest possible relative degrees.” But power is a term that connotes varied qualities to different minds; and still more different to various temperaments and experiences is the term beauty. Perhaps if he had said that it combined strength and grace, or stability and tenderness, it would be easier to appreciate his judgment. For Giotto’s Campanile has an exquisiteness allied to dignity which is characteristic of Italian Gothic at its best, yet to the taste of many will ill compare with the vigour of the French and English styles.

Suggestive of the persistence of the Romanesque style during the Gothic period the most notable instance is the Certosa, or Church of the Carthusian Order, in Pavia. The façade and lantern over the crossing are Renaissance additions; otherwise this splendid edifice, constructed of brick and terra-cotta, is, except for the Gothic refinement of the rib-vaulting, purely Romanesque. A gift to the monastery by Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti, it was begun in 1396, nine years after this patron of art and letters had begun to build Milan Cathedral, the most important example in Italy of the Gothic style.

Yet Milan involves peculiarities that may be due to the dissensions of the Italian architects with the German and French who were called in at various times to collaborate in the work. So strong a German influence is perceptible in both the character and details, that the main design has been attributed to Heinrich of Grund. Constructed entirely of white marble, the exterior is distinguished not so much by structural grandeur as by decorative richness. The windows, said to be the largest in any Gothic Cathedral, have intricate and lace-like tracery; the walls are panelled with vertical string courses; the buttresses embellished with canopied niches, holding statues; lace-like again is the enrichment of the parapets of the roofs, while from them rises a forest of spiring finials, surmounted by the marble spire which was designed in 1440 by Brunelleschi.

And in the interior, also, organic relation is sacrificed to imposing display and delight in embellishment. The dominating feature is the avenue of nave columns, nine on each side. They are 12 feet in diameter, over 100 feet high, and crowned above their capitals with a cluster of canopied niches, containing statues—a German feature. The columns isolate themselves in the design; count only as an avenue of columns, while their immense size dwarfs the height of the vaulting, the more so that the height of the side aisles made a triforium impossible, and reduced the clerestory to insignificant proportions, with mean small windows. And the impression of squatness in the vaulting is increased by the rupture which the canopied niches make between the pier shafts and vault ribs. Upward growth is arrested; organic relation violated by a merely decorative intrusion. To realise fully the diminution of structural impressiveness thereby produced, one may compare the Milan interior with that of Amiens or St. Ouen in Rouen.

Secular Gothic.—It was in their secular architecture that the Italians used the Gothic with the greatest freedom. The official buildings of this period, when the government of the cities and communes still preserved a popular form, comprised the city hall or podesta and the council hall, which was variously known as the palazzo publico, palazzo communale or palazzo del consiglio.

The most important example of a podesta is the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, which was designed, 1298, by Arnolfo di Cambio, the first architect of the Cathedral. We shall study it later in comparison with the beginnings of the Renaissance (p. 358). Opposite to it stands the Loggia dei Lanzi, an example of the open-air tribunes erected for popular ceremonies. Built in 1376 by the architects Benci di Cione and Simone di Talenti, its design is rather Romanesque than Gothic. Its name is derived from the fact that it was used as a guard house by the German spearmen of Cosimo I, after he had usurped the government of Florence and established his residence in the Palazzo Vecchio.

The finest examples of Gothic domestic architecture are to be found in the northern cities, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Bologna, and particularly in Venice, where the immunity from social disorder and outside attack, combined with commercial prosperity, encouraged a more luxurious mode of living. We shall refer to the Ca d’Oro as a type of the Gothic Venetian palace of a merchant prince, in the chapter on the Early Renaissance (p. 360). Here let us study the Ducal or Doge’s Palace, which adjoins St. Mark’s, the two buildings, one civil and the other religious, representing in visible union, the mind and the soul of Venice.

Doge’s Palace.—Instead of preserving the suggestion of a mediæval fortress as the Palazzo Vecchio does, the centre of Venetian authority is a palace, designed to represent the grandeur of the city’s destiny and to provide a setting for sumptuous civil functions and the ceremonial entertainment of ambassadors and other distinguished guests. The building, since it was founded in 800, thirty years before the founding of St. Mark’s, has undergone many vicissitudes; five times destroyed by fire and on each occasion rebuilt with greater magnificence, so that the present design is a composite of Gothic and Renaissance.

The Gothic is chiefly represented in the magnificent loggia, which comprises two open arcades, ranging along two fronts, facing, respectively, the Piazzetta and the Lagune. The lower arcade consists of pointed arches, resting on circular columns, the shafts of which are of stumpy proportions and rise directly from the pavement without bases. The capitals, carved with foliage, figures, and animals, combine to an unusual degree richness of design with delicacy of execution, while that of the corner column, which is surmounted by a group of Adam and Eve, is described by Ruskin in his “Stones of Venice” as being, in respect of workmanship and the grouping of the foliage, the finest he knows in Europe. The upper arcade is composed of twice the number of columns, which again have circular shafts without bases, but are proportionately taller and more graceful. They support trefoiled arches, whose ogee curves slide up into a series of circles pierced with quatrefoils—a combination of tracery characteristically Venetian; as indeed, is the mingled massiveness and elegance of the whole design.

This double arcade must have presented a still finer effect in the original design when it stood clear of the main façade. For the advancing of the upper part to the arcade line, which dates from a restoration after a fire in the fifteenth century, produces an effect of top-heaviness. Moreover, its direct juxtaposition with the elaborateness of the arcade accentuates the contrast, presented by the severe simplicity of the surface, patterned with red, white, and black marbles, and meagrely pierced with windows.

BOOK VI

THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD

CHAPTER I

RENAISSANCE CIVILISATION

At first the movement groped. The thinker and the artist, while intent upon the study of life, were ignorant of exact methods of study. These were gradually learned through the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman classics. The Rebirth, in fact, which is metaphorically suggested in the term Renaissance, was the result of the spread of the humanistic spirit and the “Revival of Learning”; and, in recognition of this, Classic literature was called “Litteræ Humaniores,” the students of the Classics were called Humanists, and Humanism is the term often applied to the whole movement.

The movement was one that affected the whole fabric of civilisation, for it involved no less than the self-emancipation of the human intellect and will. The human will began to free itself from the shackles of dogmatism and the domination of absolute authority, whether exercised by the Church or by civil rulers. The human intellect gradually freed itself from the subtleties and sophistries of the “Schoolmen,” ceased to speculate on abstract questions, such as the language spoken by the angels, and how many angelic beings could be supported on the point of a pin, and began to apply itself to the exact study of what was actually within the reach of human experience or research. And for this exactness of study the Revival of Learning laid the foundation, because the students of the Classics learned to collate the various manuscripts, comparing them critically so as to discover the correct reading, and were also obliged to compile grammars and dictionaries—in fact, to construct from the ground up, a fabric of reliable knowledge and at the same time a system of education. It was a process that encouraged both exact and critical research.

Meanwhile, before the Revival of Learning could make itself a force, there had been other influences which prepared the way for emancipation from the despotism of authority. The Middle Ages had been dominated by two authorities, the Church and the Holy Roman Empire. The former, as we have seen in a previous chapter, was the sole agency to introduce organisation into the chaos that succeeded the fall of the Roman Empire. It gradually subdued the barbarian conquerors not only to a semblance of religious fellowship but also to some degree of social order, and further fostered the latter by throwing the weight of its influence on the side of popular rights.

On the other hand, the attempt of Charlemagne to revive the magnificence and the authority of a Roman Emperor had been directly to force upon the various racial divisions of Europe the yoke of a political despotism, under the sanction of the Church’s co-operation. The Holy Roman Empire was an arbitrary and artificial union of unmixable elements and did not survive the death of its founder. The central authority could not hold in check the ambition and power of local authorities. The Frankish group fell apart from the Germanic groups across the Rhine. The authority of succeeding emperors was confined to the east of the Rhine and had to meet the growing opposition of the Feudal system. The result was a continual clash of authorities, in which all parties intrigued for the assistance of the Church, so that the Papal authority also was drawn into the struggle for civil power, thereby weakening its prestige in religious and social directions.

The outcome of the prolonged embroilment was the gradual consolidation of peoples into nationalities. France, England, and Germany emerged as separate unities, each drawn into a whole by racial similarities and local self-interest. The dream of a centralised and absolute authority, whether civil or religious, was slowly replaced by the practical policy of attempting to establish a balance of European powers.

And, while this gradual disintegration of the absoluteness of authority was in process, other circumstances operated to undermine the old traditional order. We have spoken of one of them—the spread of Humanism. Meanwhile the use in warfare of gunpowder and guns hastened the overthrow of the Feudal system. The introduction of the mariner’s compass made possible the exploration of continents beyond the ocean. The substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy revolutionised men’s idea of the universe. Further, the growth in nationality was accompanied by the development of separate languages, and the diffusion of these, as well as of knowledge generally, was increased by the invention of paper and printing.

Thus, from diverse directions light was breaking into the darkness of life, dispersing the superstitions and terrors that had shackled the human will, and illuminating positive pathways for the human intellect to travel. Thought ceased to be involved in allegory; the study of nature to be “perverted into grotesque and pious parables,” while sorcery and magic no longer seemed to be the means of compassing control over nature and obtaining insight into the mysteries surrounding human life. The other world, with its imagined heaven and hell, loosened its grip on the conscience, and the joys and possibilities of this world began to occupy men’s minds. The beauty of the visible world and the delights of sense ceased to be regarded as snares of the devil, and in their growing independence and belief in themselves men turned to mastering the resources of this world and to making it better for the purpose of life. No wonder, that as the consciousness of this new and fuller existence became confirmed, men spoke to one another of a Rebirth!

How this movement, which was in ferment throughout Western Europe, operated specifically in different countries, is now to be traced. The leadership in it was taken by the Rinascimento, to use the Italian word, of Italy.

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

Ever since Charlemagne’s conquest of Lombardy the Emperors had held a foot in Italy, contesting authority with the Pope. Meanwhile, the successors of Roger, the Norman conqueror of Sicily, held sway over the Kingdom of Naples, which occupied the southern part of the peninsula, and at different times was joined to or independent of the Kingdom of Sicily. Italy, in fact, had proved herself incapable of forming a united nation or of establishing a national state. Like Hellas of old, she was an agglomeration of communes and cities, capable of being inspired by a common sentiment of race, but unable to merge their independence and mutual jealousies and rivalries in a single political organisation. Even the individual communes and cities were split into factions: the Ghibellines, representing the aristocratic party, favouring the Emperor, and the Guelphs, who comprised the popular party and were assisted by the Popes.

The result of these conditions was to quicken the growth of local feeling. Patriotism was replaced by intense civic pride, which centred in the city or commune and made it vie with others in self-development. And this self-centering resulted, firstly, in each nucleus of energy developing an independent type of community and, secondly, in bringing to the surface the personal force of individual citizens. The Duke who had been elevated to or usurped the headship of the community, was compelled to maintain his position by force of character and by acts that would redound to the pride and power of the community. He needed the assistance of other men of parts and employed their services, no matter from what class of the community they had sprung. There was room higher up for every citizen who could contribute something to the community’s power and dignity. As one result of these conditions there sprang into existence a class of professional soldiers, or condottieri, who sold their services and those of their trained bands to the highest bidder, and who, when occasion offered, lifted themselves, as in the case of Colleoni and Gattamelata, to high military commands. Moreover, the perpetual intriguing that the conditions of politics had developed between cities and rival authorities, encouraged the employment of a large body of secretaries and diplomatic go-betweens, men of education and superior sharpness of wit. In fact, any one who by his brains or his handiwork could furnish eminent service to the community was eagerly sought after and promoted. Such men were held in high esteem and regarded as an honour to the community.

In an environment such as this it followed that the Italian Rinascimento was the product of men of powerful individuality and that the trend of it led to the exaltation of individualism. The first great personality associated with it is that of Petrarch.

Son of a man who had shared Dante’s exile, he himself emulated the poet of Beatrice in canzoniere, composed to his ideal mistress, Laura. He too helped to refine and vivify, as Boccaccio did a little later, the Italian tongue; but he was filled with the pride of being a descendant of the Roman People, and looked back to Latin literature as the worthiest object of his study. In his zeal for collecting and collating manuscripts and through the richness of his imagination and critical judgment, joined to a tireless devotion, he became the pioneer in that Italian scholarship which restored to Western Europe the knowledge of the Classics and laid the foundation of modern thought.

For hitherto, although an acquaintance with Latin had survived, it was chiefly in the monkish form, and the Latin authors were known only by fragments, often mutilated in the process of copying. The knowledge of the Greek tongue, while preserved in Byzantium, had all but entirely disappeared from Western Europe, and Petrarch, realising the need of recovering it, urged Boccaccio to begin the work. Accordingly the latter took lessons of an adventurer, named Leone Pilato, a native of Calabria who had resided in Thessaly, and succeeded also in having him appointed professor of Greek language and literature in the University of Florence. Boccaccio, like his friend Petrarch, was indefatigable in the search for manuscripts among the libraries and, as often, the lumber-rooms of the monasteries. And frequently he had to mourn their mutilation, as on one occasion when he found the precious sheets of vellum had been scraped clean of the classic text and inscribed with psalms for the use of the choirboys, while the decorated margins had been cut into bits and sold to women as amulets.

During the fifteenth century the pursuit of scholarship continued, receiving a great advancement when Constantinople, in 1451, was conquered by the Turks. For many of the Greek scholars found refuge in Italy, where they were received with the highest enthusiasm in universities and the palaces of princes. Thus for a century the keenest spirits of what was then the most intellectually advanced people of Europe, devoted themselves to classical erudition. The world’s debt to them is incalculable, but the boon they conferred on others was not without detriment to themselves. Preoccupation with scholarship produced a certain affectation and pedantry of mind; led to an extravagant valuation of the antique over everything modern and undermined Christianity with Paganism. Nor was it the Stoic side of Paganism that was emulated. The pleasures of life were pursued as an ideal, and with no moral curb on conduct; freedom was confused with license and the desire of the senses ousted the restraint of law. The organisation alike of the Church and of society in time became honeycombed with corruption.

In such an intellectual and moral atmosphere the ego in man was worshipped as divinity. Individualism, extolled to a fetish and unbridled by any considerations of good and bad, engendered faculties of glorious capabilities and also of monstrous depravity. Individualism, in fact, ran its hot and heady course at the expense of everything that had once counted for strength in communal and civic spirit. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the culmination of the Renaissance, a few giants survived, but the Italian people, while intellectually in the ascendant, had degenerated physically and morally and fell an easy prey to foreign aggression.

The expedition which Charles VIII made to Naples in 1494 brought the French into Italy. They were soon followed by the Spaniards, until Italy became the cockpit of European rivalries. Political as well as moral degradation was reached when, by the League of Cambrai, 1508, Pope Julius II made alliance with Louis XII of France, the Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand “The Catholic” of Spain for the partition of the Venetian territories. Humiliation ensued sixteen years later, when German and Spanish mercenaries, led by the renegade Constable Bourbon, sacked Rome. Italy, after having led the van in the emancipation of human intellect and will, had prostituted both. Even the Counter-Reformation, instituted by the Church to reform her own abuses as well as to resist the tide of Protestantism, could not save Italy to the Italians. Three hundred and fifty years had to elapse before they could recover their nationality and once more set themselves upon the road of progress.

GERMAN RENAISSANCE

The influence of the Italian Renaissance was firstly and most directly absorbed by France. But the consideration of this may conveniently be postponed until after a review of its operation in Germany and Spain. For in both these countries the Renaissance influence bred antagonisms: in Germany the Reformation and in Spain the Counter-Reformation.

The Renaissance which the Italians had initiated as a thing of Beauty, began to operate in Germany as a thing of Power; the emancipation of the human intellect and will was supplemented by the emancipation of the human conscience. The Italian indifference to the latter was more than a source of decadence to themselves; for it cleft into two channels what should have been united in a single stream of human endeavour; it forged barriers between what should be component elements in human ideals. It started that antagonism between Beauty and Morality, between Æsthetics and Ethics by which even to this day civilisation is being retarded in its richest and most beneficent possibilities of progress.

Germany was quick to absorb Italian erudition. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin scholars, rivalling those of Italy, became numerous in German universities and in the free cities of Nüremburg, Augsburg, Basel, and Strassburg. But even students who attended the universities of Italy escaped the Pagan influence. They returned to a homeland which was not strewn with classic remains, and whose traditions were still deeply rooted in mediævalism and expressed in the Gothic spirit. It was the same with the artists. For example, the art of Schongauer, Dürer, Holbein, and Cranach is untouched by that sense of beauty which their Italian contemporaries had evolved from classic influence. Moreover, the German mind was more penetrating, earnest, argumentative than the Italian, more occupied with substantial than with abstract problems. The German temperament also was more combative; incapable of the Italian cynical toleration and at once deeper and narrower in its character.

Consequently the German erudition began to apply itself to concrete problems, such as theological criticism and the absolute authority claimed by the Church. The Bible was opened up to the Germans as a new book. As the Classics had served to emancipate the Italian intellect and will, so the Bible emancipated the German conscience. “The touch of the new spirit which in Italy had evolved literature, art, and culture, sufficed in Germany to recreate Christianity.” The sale of Indulgences by Leo X and Luther’s protest but served to set the spark to the explosion, which, long in preparation, split Teutonic and Latin Christianity, and involved Western Europe for two centuries in politico-religious strife.

For gradually it had become recognised that the new “heresy” threatened the authority alike of monarchical government and the Papacy. Orthodoxy and absolutism were the two sides of the same shield. The Church had begun to realise that there was as much danger to its authority in the Pagan revival of the Italian Renaissance as in Protestantism. Both papal and imperial authority were threatened. Accordingly, Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V entered into a compact at Bologna in 1530, to maintain in its integrity the Catholic Faith. Thus began the Counter-Reformation, which reformed many of the abuses that had crept into the Church and renewed the fervour of the Catholic religion, but on the other hand, arrayed the forces of conservatism against the march of progress.

SPANISH RENAISSANCE

It was in Spain that the Counter-Reformation was most zealous. Although the influence of the Italian Renaissance had reached her, she had rejected its pagan aspects. On the one hand, her rulers jealously guarded their title of “Catholic Majesty.” On the other hand, the released energies of the country had been largely directed to the commercial conquests, opened up by the discovery of America, which encouraged that self-reliance and absorption in self that were characteristic of the Spanish temperament. Spaniards had upheld the Faith in their long contest with the Saracen intruders and still considered themselves the Champions of Christendom. Meanwhile, the intellectual activity inspired by the Renaissance gave them renewed belief in themselves and established them in their interest in the affairs of their own life.

Typical alike of the Spanish race and of the effect upon it of the Renaissance is the “Don Quixote” of Cervantes, whom Symonds ranks with Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakespeare as the four supreme literary exponents of the Renaissance. For each of these caught the spirit of the Renaissance when it was at the first freshness of its vigour in their respective countries and, instead of using it to imitate the past, captured its imagination into the vernacular of his own language, making it a most flexible and vital medium for the expression of the spirit of his own time and country. In Cervantes’ case the racial humour punctured with ridicule the affectations into which the old order of Chivalry had degenerated.

That the new attitude toward life which it indirectly advocated, failed to be realised by the Spaniards may be attributed to two causes. One is the Counter-Reformation which rallied the forces of reactionism and the other, the easily gotten wealth that poured into the country from the New World. The one, associated with Monarchical absolutism, destroyed political progress, while the other swamped initiative and the vigorous handling of life, resulting in both moral and economical decadence.

Yet the inherent raciness of the Spanish people could not be entirely suppressed. It declared itself especially in the prolific, versatile, truly national drama of Lope de Vega and Calderon, which pictured the life of the people with a variety and richness that have been surpassed only by Shakespeare. Moreover, after an apprenticeship of the Spanish painters to the works of Raphael and other Italians, the seventeenth century produced the greatest of all naturalistic painters in the person of Velasquez. Nevertheless, despite certain brilliant exceptions, it was the tragedy of Spain that at the moment, when her Renaissance was approaching fulfilment, it was strangled.

FRENCH RENAISSANCE

Very different was the part played by France. Her native genius had to some extent anticipated the spirit of Humanism, so she embraced the learning and culture of the Renaissance eagerly but with discrimination. She utilised both, not in the way of imitation, but as enrichment to her own self-expression; and, finally, as Italy declined, assumed the leadership of European culture.

Already in the twelfth century Abelard had initiated the spirit of free inquiry in theology; later, it was upon the love-songs of the trouveres or troubadours of Provence that Petrarch patterned his canzoniere, and from the fabliaux, popular in France, that Boccaccio derived the character and some of the themes of his Decameron.

While in the north France maintained close relations with Flanders, she was drawn into commercial relations with Italy, directly, in the south, and by way of the German cities and Burgundy on the east. Her political relations began, as we have noted, with the expedition of Charles VII to Naples, and were continued by the efforts of Louis XII and Francis I to secure and hold possessions in Italy. Even the latter’s disastrous defeat at Pavia did not discourage him from subsequent warlike enterprises, but meanwhile his zeal for things Italian caused him to invite many Italian artists to Fontainebleau. Henri II’s queen was Catherine de Medici and her children, Charles IX and Henri III, were brought up as Italianated Frenchmen.

Thus, during the sixteenth century the Court and nobility of France became largely Italianised in manners, although the survival of the Feudal system and the distinctly military character of the aristocracy rendered France very different from Italy in many vital particulars. For France was engaged in developing her nationality and these disintegrating and aggressive elements had to be subdued to the central authority—a process made more complex by the spread of the Reformation under the leadership of Calvin, so that the struggle was one of conscience as well as political power. But in the process France was awakened to a real sense of nationalism. The Gallic spirit became aware of itself and intent upon development and consolidation.

Consequently, the presence of such artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Del Sarto, Primaticcio, and Benvenuto Cellini could not stifle the native art. They left their impress on the decorations of Fontainebleau and served as models of superior knowledge and refinement to French painters and sculptors, yet did no more than modify the French originality of inspiration. Painters like the Clouets and the unnamed painter of the “Diana” of the Louvre and the sculptors Goujon and Pilon, despite some debt to Italian influence, preserved unmistakably their Gallic spirit, as we shall also find did the architects of the French châteaux.

It was the spirit that had created the miracles of Gothic architecture; a spirit highly adventurous, yet logical, which overflowed with enthusiasm for life, but was controlled by instinctive taste.

It suffered a clipping of its freedom when France was finally consolidated as a State and Absolutism was enthroned in the person of Louis XIV. Under the officialdom that he established French art was compelled to sit at the feet of the Italians. Yet, even so, the native genius shines through acquired affectations in the work of Poussin and Claude, while the eighteenth century witnessed the reblossoming of the Gallic spirit in the dainty fancies of Rococo decoration. On the other hand, the sterner issues of the Renaissance, as they affected political liberty, culminated after long delay in the Revolution.

That the Gallic genius has been and still remains a powerful factor in the progress of civilisation is due to its blend of the intellectual and the aesthetic faculties. It thinks clearly and feels subtly and adjusts thought and feeling into an admirable accord by its tact of taste. It approximates most closely to the quality of the old Greek genius. At its best, under the impulse of a high spiritual purpose, it has expressed itself in terms of Truth and Beauty that no modern nation has rivalled. Even when its motive has been trivial, its manner of expression has redeemed it from insignificance, the craftsmanship being in itself so true and beautiful. Moreover, the French spirit is so agile and responsive, that it has caught and reflected back the diverse thought and feeling of other countries, and, further, has so marked a strain of originality that it has preserved the faculty of creativeness.

NETHERLANDISH RENAISSANCE

The Netherlands, through their commercial intercourse with Italy, early came in touch with the Renaissance. But the self-reliance of the people was such that the earliest influence only improved their own way of expressing their racial consciousness. For example, the town halls in which the pride of their cities was enshrined, owed nothing to Italy except some later refinements of decoration. The painting of the Van Eycks was not only different from but technically superior to the contemporary art of Italy and furnished the latter with the practical processes of the oil medium. In time the mannerisms of Italian painting made themselves felt in the work of Van Orley and others, but the genuine reaction of the Flemish genius to the Italian Renaissance did not develop until the seventeenth century, when it produced a reinvigorated expression of itself in the genius of Rubens.

Political and religious causes, due to the grip of the Spanish rule, had retarded the progress of the Flemish provinces, while, on the other hand, it was the break away from this absolutism that started the northern provinces of Holland on their Renaissance. The Holland Renaissance of the seventeenth century, which moved step by step with their struggle for political and religious liberty and their consolidation into a united nation, represented a most remarkable blend of Humanism and Revival of Learning. It was unique at its time and has preserved its significance, because both these engines of activity were devoted deliberately to national and individual betterment. The Dutch zest of life stimulated them not only to obtain their liberty, but also to improve in a multitude of practical ways the conditions of living. It caused them to organise industry and commerce, to cultivate their land intensively and to extend their explorations and trade over the seven seas. Nor were the intellectual resources overlooked. The university of Leyden became a great centre of human culture and its scholars and scientists set the course of thought and research in the direction of modern life.

Holland’s prosperity, however, proved her undoing. After defying and withstanding the absolutism of Spain, she fell a victim to that of Louis XIV. And less by direct conquest than by the insidious sapping of French influences. She became inflated with the ambition of being a world-power, while her citizens emulated the fashions of French society. Losing at the same time political liberty and intellectual and artistic initiative and independence, she followed the human sheep-trail that led southward over the Alps and for more than a century became a clumsy imitator of the past art of Italy.

ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

England’s insular position tended to delay her reception of the New Spirit. When at length it reached her it came simultaneously in the form of Italian influence and of the Reformation. Yet both had been anticipated a century earlier; the Reformation in the teaching of Wycliffe, the Renaissance in the poetry of Chaucer. But the harvest of the new spirit had been deferred by the French wars, the Wars of the Roses, and the persecution of the Lollards, so that it was not until 1536, when the King, Lords, and Commons by the Act of Supremacy established the Reformed Faith as the State Religion, that England entered definitely, says Symonds, on a career of intellectual activity abreast with the foremost nations of the Continent.

By this time the latter had accomplished the work of collating and printing the classic authors and had produced a varied mass of literature in the modern languages; all of which became food for the omnivorous appetite of the English. Assimilation, at first, was slow and retarded by imitation. Wyatt and Surrey, for example, grafted the graces of Italian poetry onto the native stock, introducing the forms of the sonnet and blank verse; Sidney experimented with the classic metres, while tragedies in the style of Seneca, rivalled the similarly pedantic imitations of Italian and French dramatists. Gradually, however, the vigour of English digestion accomplished a complete assimilation.

England, through her sympathy with Holland, had found herself involved in the conflict of the Counter-Reformation. She broke the rival power of Spain by the destruction of the Armada, and through the buccaneering exploits of Raleigh, Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins opened up the beginnings of colonial expansion. She leaped at a bound into consciousness of nationality and in the glow of her enthusiasm discovered her own capacity of originality.

Shakespeare is at once the crown and symbol of the English Renaissance. He drew the material of his plots from a variety of foreign sources, but creatively impressed upon his plays either a new and a universal significance or unmistakably the English spirit of his day. Meanwhile, Spenser, while deriving his allegory from the Middle Ages and decorative richness from the Italian Renaissance, added thereto a sweetness, purity, and splendour of imagination peculiarly English. And by the side of Spenser and Shakespeare, as representative of the creative imagination of the English Renaissance, must be set Bacon, the expositor of the modern scientific method.

This flowering of the English Renaissance, in which intellectual brilliance walked hand in hand with beauty, was rudely interrupted, firstly, when the spirit of the Counter-Reformation was revived by James I and Charles I; secondly, by the resultant Puritan reaction, and the equally resultant license of the Restoration. A cleavage between morals and beauty was opened up that to this day has not been bridged. On the other hand, the spirit, let loose by the Renaissance and the Reformation, pushed forward persistently on the path of political liberty, and England’s mightiest contribution to the civilisation of the world has been the realisation, however imperfect, of the ideal of human freedom. Meanwhile, in the realm of the arts, it is in the province of Literature, rather than in those of the Fine Arts, that her Renaissance has reaped its most abundant harvest.

CHAPTER II

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY