Classic Revival Italian Architecture

Palladio and his successors by the hollow and imposing pomp which they introduced rendered possible a new style.
This new style was no longer Italian, but became universal, just as the general culture had become universal and was no longer Italian.

Architecture Of Italy

Italy had indeed remained the center of this culture until toward the end of the seventeenth century, and then only abdicated a portion of its dominance to France, which had regained under Louis XIV. that European preponderance which it had enjoyed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

But France, like Italy, was only a central point: the whole of Western Europe was the realm out of whose broad area all forces worked toward the same end—the diminution of national differences and the advancement of sentiments and interests which swayed all countries alike.

France was the first country which at the commencement of the seventeenth century directly adopted the symmetrical palatial architecture that proceeded from Italy, and the latest French works of the sixteenth century noticeably tended toward this end.

In 1611, Jacques de Brosse built the Luxembourg Palace at Paris for Maria de’ Medici; this structure was an imitation of the manner exhibited by Ammanati in the court of the Palazzo Pitti.

The Protestant parts of Germany adopted this style less decidedly. The town-hall at Nuremberg (1613-1619), the work of Eucharius Holzschuher, was one of the first German works of the kind; he adopted the palace-arrangement with much directness and reached an imposing effect only by the vigorous detail. Yet he did not venture to introduce the massive Palladian columns and pilasters, while in three pavilions which he set upon the cornice to break the horizontal sky-line may be recognized the influence of the naive German picturesqueness.

One of the most important edifices of the Netherlands is the old Stadhuis (now the royal palace) at Amsterdam, built by Jacob van Campen in the first half of the seventeenth century.

The sober style which Palladio’s influence spread everywhere is here apparent without being weighed down by too massive detail; the grand proportions give to the structure an effect of solidity.

The Church of the Jesuits at Cologne (1621-1629), on the contrary, almost permits Gothic to predominate. It reaches an effect of magnificent spaciousness, but is at the same time so permeated by baroque elements that we can scarcely enumerate it with the before-mentioned works in which the Middle Ages are still prominent.

Waldstein Palace.—Among the palaces of Prague, the Waldstein (1623), built by the grand duke of Friedland, stands out conspicuously. The square court and external facade show with sufficient stiffness the Italian style of the period with some baroque additions. A colossal portico of three mighty arches of the entire height of the palace opens backward toward the garden, and in its exceeding grandeur and magnificence surpasses not only the German, but also the Italian, structures of the Renaissance, and in architectonic importance exceeds the palace itself; but exact researches must be instituted before it can be known whether Italian masters worked upon the palace or the portico.

Inigo Jones.—In England, where the picturesque mixture of Gothic and Renaissance generally known as Elizabethan lasted far into the seventeenth century, the decided acceptance of Renaissance forms and of the world-ruling Italian taste first took place in the reign of Charles I. (1625-1649); when architecture in Italy itself was on the way to the great degradation.

It was Inigo Jones who sought to make the Italian style familiar, and, following Palladio, designed the palace at Whitehall, which had it been executed in its entirety would have been the largest palace in the world built in the Italian style.

But only a small part was finished; the king was executed in it, and subsequently the construction was abandoned.

In his villa at Chiswick, Inigo Jones adhered closely to Palladio’s model, since he placed an octangular cupola over a square building and set up a Corinthian temple-front for the entrance.

In Wilton House he attained nobility of effect through beautiful proportions, but it was coupled with remarkable sobriety.

Webb, the adopted son of Inigo Jones, designed Araesbury Castle, in Wiltshire, as a plain quadrangular mass with a ground-floor of rusticated work on which stood a lofty storey, and above that a half-storey, with a Corinthian portico and pediment for the entrance. He also superintended the construction of Greenwich Hospital.

Francois Mansard invented the roof which bears his name, and which made it possible for him to work into a storey contained in the roof the rich dormers that for a long time had been used in France, and to approximate the Italian manner.

This mansard storey rose over a horizontal cornice, and above it the roof was almost flat.

The rest of his architecture closely followed Palladio without entirely accepting the exaggerations of his model. One of his principal works is the Chateau Maison, near St. Germain.

Though the entire spirit of the Renaissance was secular, though it degenerated more and more, though its anti-Christian spirit penetrated gradually into all lands, yet this could not happen without an inward reaction, without the setting in of a current equally international working in the interests of Christianity: this current found its chief supporters in the order of the Jesuits and in that portion of the clergy which followed it. It falls outside our province to trace the action of this tendency, and to follow the long-continued strife which the free worldly tendency carried on uninterruptedly with this reactionary one.

We have but to note the fact that church-building was everywhere carried on with renewed activity, and that the churches, whether in the North or in the South, struck the same key, more independent of local schools and of nationality than at any other period, yet that church-construction also participated in the baroque condition of Architecture—that it also sought by hollow pomp to win the masses and by the exaggeration of this hollow pomp to the uttermost to dazzle and lead the senses captive.

It is impossible to give the date at which this influence began to be powerful.

This spirit speaks in many of the before-mentioned Italian works, and in the course of the seventeenth century it forced its way out of Italy into the North, and there overpowered the yet-existing tendency which still upheld reminiscences at least of Gothic.

Naturally, this new tendency was nowhere so strong as in Italy, where great numbers of buildings rose. Of extraordinary magnificence is the Church of S. Domenico at Palermo, begun in 1640; this is an elongated basilica whose nave is borne upon eight couples of marble columns.

Guarini of Modena built in Turin the churches of S. Lorenzo, S. Filippo Neri, the Porta del Po, the palace of Prince Philibert of Savoy, and the facade of the Palazzo Carignano.

Bernini.—One of the most influential masters of the seventeenth century was Lorenzo Bernini; in 1629 ne designed the facade of St. Peter’s at Rome with two towers, only one of which was executed, and this was soon demolished.

The tabernacle of the high altar at St. Peter’s is also his work, as well as the grand colonnades enclosing the entrance-court of the same church; these were added a little before his death.

Some masters had before this employed in their decorations parts of pediments —that is to say, the lower portions only—as had been done in the East in the latest period of the antique.

Bernini gave these portions a curved form; he also took from the columns their supporting power by twisting them.

He formed the upper part of the high altar of St. Peter’s with curved colonnettes propped against one another in the centre.

In short, he gave the signal to introduce everywhere curved forms in place of straight lines.

At once these curved forms conquered all the countries of the West.

There was through Europe an intellectual unity such as had never existed before.

There was no longer any nationality: common culture had everywhere brought about a common taste.

Architecture formed but one great school, the centre of which was Italy—was Bernini himself.

Borromini.—Bernini’s rival, Francesco Borromini, sought to surpass him in originality—that is to say, in the invention of wild forms.

Ground-plans and elevations threw away straight lines and were composed of curves twisted outward and inward in a wild topsy-turvy.

The painter Domenichino, who built at Rome the Church of S. Ignazio, the entrance of the Palazzo Lanzelotti, and the Villa Ludovisi, preserved somewhat better proportions.

Alessandro Algatdi built the facade of S. Ignazio and the Villa Pamfili.

Pietro Berettini of Cortona built also at Rome a series of churches, the most imposing of which was Sta. Maria in Via Lata.

Cosima Fansaga of Bergamo, Bernini’s pupil, built at Naples the Chiesa Nuova del Gesu, that of the Madonna della Pietra Santa, and the Fontana Medina.

The circular structure, on account of the beautifully artistic effect of space which it rendered possible, had not been entirely discarded from church-architecture.

One of the finest examples is the cupola of Sta. Maria della Salute at Venice, erected in 1631 by Longhena.

This cupola dominates the church; so that the other parts only appear to be attached between its abutments.

The tendency to a greater liberty of caprice inaugurated by Bernini and Borromini was felt most in church-architecture, where, in union with the yet greater degeneracy of interior decoration, it gave room for the play of the most inconceivable caprices so far as the Catholic cult was concerned.

Even Germany, after the war of the first half of the seventeenth century had destroyed so many churches, found opportunity to re-erect a series of such edifices in city and country—or, at least, to put others, partially ruined, into serviceable condition—and without distinction of creed the same degenerate forms were employed for the exterior.

A very noticeable trait of greater sobriety distinguished the Protestant from the Catholic churches, but in the interior the use of galleries, which were essential to Protestant requirements, as well as the more sober spirit which grew out of a simpler ceremonial and liturgy, often resulted in extreme and inartistic plainness, which was carried still farther by the puritanical Northern spirit that excluded all externals from divine service.

This severer and more earnest manner was apparent also in secular buildings, just as the same trait was evident in Palladio’s works.

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