Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/180

 168 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE complete and harmonising beauty can only be produced by the union of freedom and law. For centuries German architecture, uniting in this manner artistic freedom and technical exactitude, made its mark over the Christian world. It became natural- ised in Italy through the cathedrals and churches of Milan, Florence, Orvieto, Assisi, and Siena, as well as through many other buildings, some of greater, some of lesser, importance. In the year 1481 we find Stras- burg architects sent for to Italy to give their opinions with regard to the completion of the Milan Cathedral. ' The Germans,' said the Italian Paul Jovius, ' are carrying everything before them in art, and we, sluggish Italians must needs send to Germany for good workmen.' Andrea Palladio, who died in 1580, one of the most influential promoters of the Eenaissance architecture, pronounced the buildings of the German school to be the best in Italy. In England, German architecture reigned supreme at this period, and left its stamp in the cathedrals and churches of Salisbury, Ely, Lincoln, Worcester, Win- chester, Gloucester, Exeter, Beverley, Bristol and York. In Portugal it embodied itself in the cathedrals of Barce- lona, Leon, Oviedo, Toledo, Seville, and the monastery churches of Batalha and Belem. In Burgos, towards the middle of the fifteenth century, an architect from Cologne executed the most beautiful facade for a church. Palma, in the island of Majorca, is a Gothic city which looks as if it were all one construction. It is probable that after the taking of the island by the Spaniards a colony of German stonecutters emigrated there. Throughout Hungary also we find buildings of the German school of architecture, and partly executed by German masters, which challenge comparison with structures in any