Page:Modern and contemporary Czech art (1924).pdf/91

 These conceptions, both in theory and in practice, resulted in a confusion of styles, which was aggravated still further by the diverse religious, political and æsthetic tendencies of the period. This chaos characterises the second half of the nineteenth century, and continued until the modern style imposed itself. The ascendancy of the historic styles not only attests the exhaustion of the inventive spirit after the Baroque period, but it also reflects very clearly the crisis in which Europe was striving to find a new expression for the plastic arts. To begin with, it was the Middle Ages that prevailed, and academic romanticism invaded even secular architecture more completely than was admitted in theory. Subsequently a very powerful influence came from France: the brilliant personality of Viollet-le-Duc contended in favour of architecture; another influence came from South Germany, where a whole generation of architects of the modernised Gothic School had grown up.

Ecclesiastical architecture fared no better. If the Gothic served as almost the sole basis for lay architecture, the builders of churches preferred the Romanesque, backed as it was by a long local tradition. But they too created nothing great, and they often allowed archeological enthusiasm to prevail over artistic inspiration. Moreover the plans on which their constructions were based were, as a rule, mere engineers’ draughts adapted for architectural use. In the provinces especially, inspiration was drawn from the printed models of Kaura. The church of the Slav apostles Cyril and Methodos, at Karlín, near Prague, which was to unite in a joint achievement, representative of Czech art, the architect Ullmann, the sculptor Levý, and the painter Mánes, is the only monumental project of the age. The project, however, was not carried out in full accordance with the original scheme. The same barrenness of inspiration marks the belated flowering of Gothicized Romanticism towards 1870,