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 malady which had not entirely disappeared when the Gothic style had already gone out of fashion. Schmidt’s doctrine was still upheld by all who came from Vienna. Thus it was that the aesthetics of Viennese architecture governed the undertakings, often international in character, of Mocker’s contemporary, Josef Hlávka, a great master builder rather than an original artist. This collaborator of Ferstel’s in the construction of the Votive Church in Vienna, the greatest of modern sham-Gothic edifices, built from his own plans the palace of the Orthodox Greek bishop at Černovice, and, in his capacity as master builder, the Vienna Imperial Opera House, while in Prague he conceived and erected the great Lying-in Hospital. In this enamelled brickwork building he utilized elements of the English Gothic, which he adapted with an admirable taste born of his long experience, and still lacking in the bishop’s palace at Černovice, where the variety of styles, slightly tinged with orientalism, has weakened the monumental character of the building as a whole.

This very anarchy, however, was a sign that new forms of architecture were being aimed at, and Hlávka himself, like so many others, did not devote himself exclusively to any one style. Moreover, the later Romanticism had already struck a blow at the predominance of Gothic, by introducing from time to time features borrowed from the Renaissance. In Europe, the Neo-Renaissance had already made its triumphal entry, the way being prepared by scholars who studied the Italian quattrocento and cinquecento. It did not reach Bohemia till very late in the day, and even then some considerable time elapsed before it was regarded as a true architectural system: not as a mere affair of ornamentation, but a radical re-arrangement of the whole building, calling for the old partnership of architect, sculptor, painter and workman. Hence from 1850 onwards Renaissance motifs are in evidence, but they are applied in