A Text-Book of the History of Architecture Part 25

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 197.--PALACE OF CHARLES V., GRANADA.]

+THE GRIEGO-ROMANO.+ The more cla.s.sic 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 cla.s.sical 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 facades 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 Molk, 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 Gustrow, 1555-65; of Oels, 1559-1616; of Bernburg, 1565; of Heiligenburg, 1569-87; Munzhof at Munich, 1575; l.u.s.thaus (demolished) at Stuttgart, 1575; Wilhelmsburg Castle at Schmalkald, 1584-90; castle of Hamelschenburg, 1588-1612.--SECOND PERIOD: Zunfthaus at Basle, 1578, in advanced style; so also Juleum at Helmstadt, 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 Schluter, 1699-1706; Catholic church, Dresden. (For Cla.s.sic Revival, see next chapter.)--TOWN HALLS: At Heilbronn, 1535; Gorlitz, 1537; Posen, 1550; Mulhausen, 1552; Cologne, porch with Corinthian columns and Gothic arches, 1569; Lubeck (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 Siloe; 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 CLa.s.sIC REVIVALS IN EUROPE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson. Also Chateau, _Histoire et caracteres de l'architecture en France_; and Lubke, _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 cla.s.sic 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 cla.s.s 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 mediaeval 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 (_ecole 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 _Neo-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 cla.s.sicism elsewhere merely a greater correctness of detail, not any radical change of form or spirit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 facade, 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 facade to the +Fitzwilliam Museum+ at Cambridge, by _Ba.s.sevi_, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt.

The +High School+ and the Royal Inst.i.tution 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 cla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 199.--ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LIVERPOOL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 200.--THE OLD MUSEUM, BERLIN.]

+GERMANY.+ During the eighteenth century the cla.s.sic 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 h.e.l.lenism 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 Propylaea, 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. Sc.h.i.n.kel_ (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 n.o.ble palace of art, to whose monumental requirements and artistic purpose the Greek colonnades and pediments were not inappropriate. Sc.h.i.n.kel'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 gla.s.s; 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 +Propylaea+ at Munich, by the same (Fig. 201), and the +Court Theatre+ at Berlin, by Sc.h.i.n.kel, are other important examples of the style. The latter is externally one of the most beautiful theatres in Europe, though less ornate than many. Sc.h.i.n.kel'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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 201.--THE PROPYLaeA, MUNICH.]

In Vienna the one notable monument of the Cla.s.sic Revival is the +Reichsrathsgebaude+ 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 ma.s.s.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 202.--PLAN OF PANTHeON, PARIS.]

+FRANCE.+ In France the Cla.s.sic 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 facade of St. Sulpice, and the coldly beautiful +Pantheon+ (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 Pantheon, the greatest ecclesiastical monument of its time in France (otherwise known as the church of Ste.

Genevieve), the spirit of correct cla.s.sicism 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 203.--EXTERIOR OF PANTHeON, PARIS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 204.--ARC DE L'eTOILE, PARIS.]

The dome, which is of stone throughout, has three sh.e.l.ls, the intermediate sh.e.l.l serving to support the heavy stone lantern. The architect was _Soufflot_ (1713-81). The +Grand Theatre+, 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'etoile, at the summit of the Avenue of the Champs Elysees, 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 Armee, 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 +etoile+ (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 n.o.blest creations of its cla.s.s. 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 Legislatif+ 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Neo-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 facade is the most striking single feature; the beautiful +Library of the ecole des Beaux-Arts+, by _Duban_; the library of +Ste.

Genevieve+, by _Labrouste_, in which a long facade is treated without a pilaster or column, simple arches over a ma.s.sive bas.e.m.e.nt 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 206.--DOORWAY, eCOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS.]

+THE CLa.s.sIC REVIVAL ELSEWHERE.+ The other countries of Europe have little to show in the way of imitations of cla.s.sic 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 facade 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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sic 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.n.a.logous 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sic 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bly 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 cla.s.sic 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.

The +MONUMENTS+ of the Cla.s.sic Revival have been referred to in the foregoing text at sufficient length to preclude the necessity of further enumeration here.