Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/408

Rh 390 RENAISSANCE occupations and the limitations of the Middle Ages, for this reason mainly that what we call mediaeval was to a very large extent Teutonic. But on the Spanish peninsula, in the masterpieces of Velazquez, Cervantes, Camoens, Calderon, ve emerge into an atmosphere of art, definitely national, distinctly modern, where solid natural forms stand before us realistically modelled, with light and shadow on their rounded outlines, and where the airiest creatures of the fancy take shape and weave a dance of rhythmic, light, incomparable intricacy. The Spanish Renaissance would in itself suffice, if other witnesses were wanting, to prove how inaccurate is the theory that limits this movement to the revival of learning. Touched by Italian influences, enriched and fortified by the new learning, Spanish genius walked firmly forward on its own path. It was only crushed by forces generated in the nation that produced it, by the Inquisition and by despotic Catholic absolutism. Explora- In the history of the Renaissance, Spain and Portugal tion of represent the exploration of the ocean and the colonization of the other hemisphere. The voyages of Columbus and Vespucci to America, the rounding of the Cape by Diaz and the discovery of the sea road to India by Vasco da Gama, Cortes's conquest of Mexico and Pizarro's conquest of Peru, marked a new era for the human race and inaugurated the modern age more decisively than any other series of events has done. It has recently been maintained that modern European history is chiefly an affair of competition between confederated states for the possession of lands revealed by Columbus and Da Gama. Without challenging or adopt- ing this speculation, it may be safely affirmed that nothing so pregnant of results has happened as this exploration of the globe. To say that it displaced the centre of gravity in politics and commerce, substituting the ocean for the Mediterranean, dethroning Italy from her seat of central importance in traffic, depressing the eastern and elevating the western powers of Europe, opening a path for Anglo- Saxon expansiveness, forcing philosophers and statesmen to regard the Occidental nations as a single group in counter- poise to other groups of nations, the European community as one unit correlated to other units of humanity upon this planet, is truth enough to vindicate the vast signi- ficance of these discoveries. The Renaissance, far from being the re-birth of antiquity with its civilization confined to the Mediterranean, with its Hercules' Pillars beyond which lay Cimmerian darkness, was thus effectively the entrance upon a quite incalculably wider stage of life, in which mankind at large has since enacted one great drama. Dogmatic While Spanish navies were exploring the ocean, and Catholi- Spanish paladins were overturning empires, Charles V. sm ' headed the reaction of Catholicism against reform. Stronger as king of Spain than as emperor, for the empire was little but a name, he lent the weight of his authority to that system of coercion and repression which enslaved Italy, desolated Germany with war, and drowned the Low Countries in blood. Philip II., with full approval of the Spanish nation, pursued the same policy in an even stricter spirit. He was powerfully assisted by two institu- tions, in which the national character of Spain expressed itself, the Inquisition and the Society of Jesus. Of the former it is not needful to speak here. But we have to observe that the last great phenomenon of the Spanish Renaissance was Ignatius Loyola, who organized the militia by means of which the church worked her Counter-Reformation. His motto, Perinde ac cadaver, expressed that recognition of absolutism which papacy and monarchy demanded for their consolidation. The logical order of an essay which attempts to show how Renaissance was correlated to Reformation and Counter-Reformation has necessitated the treatment of Italy, Germany, and Spain in succession ; for these three From nations were the three main agents in the triple process to thl |: be analysed. It was due to their specific qualities, and to the diverse circumstances of their external development, ' c that the re-birth of Europe took this form of duplex action on the lines of intellectual and moral progress, followed by reaction against mental freedom. We have now to speak of France, which earliest absorbed the influence of the Italian revival, and of England, which received it latest. The Renaissance may be said to have begun in France with Charles VIII. 's expedition to Naples, and to have con- tinued until the extinction of the house of Valois. Louis XIL and Francis I. spent a considerable portion of their reigns in the attempt to secure possession of the Italian provinces they claimed. Henry II. 's queen was Catherine of the Medicean family ; and her children, Charles IX. and Henry III., were Italianated Frenchmen. Thus the con- nexion between France and Italy during the period 1494- 1589 was continuous. The French passed to and fro across the Alps on military and peaceful expeditions. Italians came to France as courtiers, ambassadors, men of business, captains, and artists. French society assumed a strong Italian colouring, nor were the manners of the court very different from those of an Italian city, except that externally they remained ruder and less polished. The relation between the crown and its great feudatories, the military bias of the aristocracy, and the marked distinction between classes which survived from the Middle Ages, rendered France in many vital points unlike Italy. Yet the annals of that age, and the anecdotes retailed by Brantome, prove that the royalty and nobility of France had been largely Italianized. It is said that Louis XIL brought Fra Giocondo of Fn Verona back with him to France, and founded a school of arc : architects. But we need not have recourse to this legend for the explanation of such Italian influences as were already noticeable in the Renaissance buildings on the Loire. Without determining the French style, Italian intercourse helped to stimulate its formation and development. There are students of the 15th century in France who resent this intrusion of the Italian Renaissance. But they forget that France was bound by inexorable laws of human evolution to obey the impulse which communicated itself to every form of art in Europe. In the school of Fontainebleau, under the patronage of Francis I., that Italian influence made itself distinctly felt ; yet a true French manner had been already formed, which, when it was subsequently applied at Paris, preserved a marked national quality. The characteristic of the style developed by Bullant, Do 1'Orme, and. Lescot, in the royal or princely palaces of Chenonceaux, Chambord, Anet, Ecouen, Fontainebleau, the Louvre, and elsewhere, is a blending of capricious fancy and inventive richness of decoration with purity of outline and a large sense of the beauty of extended masses. Beginning with the older castles of Touraine, and passing onward to the Tuileries, we trace the passage from the mediaeval fortress to the modern pleasure house, and note how architecture obeyed the special demands of that new phenomenon of Renaissance civilization, the court. In the general distribution of parts these monumental buildings express the peculiar conditions which French society assumed under the influence of Francis I. and Diane de Poitiers. In details of execution and harmonic combina- tions they illustrate the precision, logic, lucidity, and cheerful spirit of the national genius. Here, as in Lombardy, a feeling for serene beauty derived from study of the antique has not interrupted the evolution of a style indigenous to France and eminently characteristic of the French temperament. During the reign of Francis I. several Italian painters