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.

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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.

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FIG. 176.—STAIRCASE TOWER, BLOIS.

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.

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FIG. 177.—PLAN 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).

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FIG. 178.—VIEW OF CHAMBORD.

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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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FIG. 185.—BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL.

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.

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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.

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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.

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FIG. 188.—PLAN OF BLENHEIM.
Larger View

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.

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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).

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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.