Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/500

Rh 442 ARCHITECTURE Home. The church of Sainte Genevicve, or the Pantheon, a work of the following reign, was intended to be in the ancient Roman style, and of Roman magnificence ; but it is rather papally than imperially so. Ancient Rome was regarded in the columnar ordinance, but modern Rome in the architectural composition. In it the ecclesiastical style of the Cinquecento is commingled with the simple beauties of Roman architecture, almost, indeed, to the destruction of the latter ; and it is crowned by a too lofty cupola. More recently the works of the ancients have been studied by the architects of France, greatly to the amelioration of their style, although many of them still appear to disregard the peculiarities of real Greek architecture, and to retain their devotion to Vitruvius and the 15th century. Spain received but soon modified the Italo-Vitruvian architecture, and has never recovered from the architectural excesses into which her architects plunged when the wealth of their countrymen in the IGth and 17th centuries enabled them to accomplish such enormoiis works. Of these, the man of the greatest fame out of his own country is Herrera, the architect of the Escorial, a vast palace built upon the ingeniously rural plan of a gridiron. It is a vast but bare, cold, and repulsive building. Not less is the cathedral at Valladolid a grand failure, though Herrera must be credited with much more self-restraint and reserve in the use of ornament than the Italian architects of his own time, and some of his contemporaries and successors in Spain. One of the most famous of these, Churriguerra, gave his name to a fashionable style which was neither more nor less than the most rococo travesty of Italian Renaissance that could be invented ; and another school of architects, imitating the delicate chasing of silversmiths work, produced another variation of the style, which was christened &quot; Plateresque.&quot; If this is less cold than Her- rera s work, and less offensive than Churriguerra s, it con tains at the same time none of the elements of a really great and lasting style of architecture, and is only interest ing as a local variety of style. The Italian revival was the means of extinguishing the Pointed style of architecture in Germany, and certainly without affording it an equivalent. Italian architects were employed in Germany, and Germans acquired their manner ; but they did not improve it, nor did they make it productive of so many good effects as the Italians themselves did. The change in religion which followed the change in architecture in so large a part of Germany may have tended to prevent the latter from acquiring that degree of exuberance there which it reached in Italy; but even in Catholic Germany the splendid Pointed cathedrals have never given way to modifications of the pseudo-classic St Peter s. In the use of Cinquecento architecture for secular structures, it may be truly said that the Germans have not excelled the Italians, nor, on the other hand, have they equalled them in the absurdities and extravagances which are so frequently observable in the works of some of the latter. The Germans also have turned their attention to the works of the ancients, and the fruit of this is evident in many parts of the country, particularly in Prussia ; still, however, they have yet to show that it is possible to apply the Greek models to modern uses, and to exhibit a proper sense of the exquisite perfection of their detail, as well as to emancipate themselves from the tram mels of the Vitruvian school. The northern Continental nations have been dependent for their architecture on Ger many, France, or Italy, and can produce nothing that gives them a claim to consideration in such a review as the present. St Petersburg is exclusively the work of archi tects of the nations just enumerated, and presents a mass of the merest common-places of Italian architecture, in structures calculated by their extent only, like Versailles, the Escorial, and St Peter s, to impose on the vulgar eye. MODERN ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. We have already more than once had occasion to refer incidentally to the introduction of Cinquecento architecture into Britain ; and in noticing it more particularly, and tracing its course, we are saved the trouble of keeping up a distinction between the different parts of our triple nation, because at the time it actually crossed the Channel the union of the kingdoms had taken place. When the Pointed style received its deathblow in England, in the reign of Henry VIII., it did not immedi ately cease to exist; nor was it immediately succeeded by the Italian when it became extinct. It was gradually declining through all the 16th century, during the latter part of which period what has been called the Elizabethan style became somewhat permanent. It consists of a singular admixture of the Italian orders with many peculiarities of the Pointed style, and in many examples the latter appears predominant. With such difficulty, indeed, did that fascinating manner give up its hold on the minds of men in this country, that the Cinquecentists appear to have relinquished the hope of effecting its destruction, unfortunately, however, not until the injury was done 5 and for some time we were left without a style of any kind, unless that may be called by the name which marks the edifices of the reign of James I., and of which the oldest parts of St James s Palace are a specimen. The destruction of the Pointed style has been referred by some to the change in religion which took place under the Tudor line of English monarchs, but certainly with out siifficient reason. It was the &quot; Reformation &quot; of archi tecture in Italy, and not that of religion in Great Britain, that effected it ; and it may be doubted whether the change would not have taken place sooner in this country if its connection with Italy had not been so materially affected by the moral change here ; for it was Germany and France that supplied us with architectural reformers during the reigns of Henry VIII. and his children, and not Italy, whose professors might possibly have obtained more credit than their disciples did. So dilatory were we, indeed, in the cultivation of the Italian style, that the first professor of it who was actually employed on edifices in this country came to it from Denmark! It is true he was an Englishman ; but so little hope did he appear to have of success at home, that he accepted an invitation from the king of that country. He had gone to Venice to study painting; but becoming enamoured of architecture, as he saw it in the works of Palladio, he had made that his study instead, and had already acquired considerable reputation in that city when Christian IV. of Denmark invited him to his court to occupy the post of his first architect. A train of circum stances brought him to England a few years after James I. came to the English crown, and he was appointed architect at first to the queen, and subsequently to Henry prince of Wales. But this does not appear to have then obtained employment for him, since after the death of the prince he went again to Italy, where he remained till the office of surveyor-general, which had been promised him in rever sion, fell vacant. This was the celebrated Inigo Jones, who has been called the English Palladio ; and, indeed, he succeeded so well in acquiring the peculiar manner of that architect, that he richly deserves whatever credit the appel lation conveys. It is unfortunate, however, for his own reputation, that he had not looked beyond Palladio and their common preceptor Vitruvius to the models the latter pretends to describe ; in which case he might have been the means of solving the question whether the truly classical architecture of the ancients could ever be intro duced here with any advantage. But instead of that be