The station of the Royal Horse-Guards, at the entrance of Whitehall, in London, is typical of the English Renaissance expression of monumental architecture THE GREATEST MONUMENT OF ENGLISH RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, typifies the entire character of the English conception of the architecture of Renaissance Italy. (The lower portion is hidden by buildings in the foreground) The reign of Elizabeth, from 1559 to 1603 (when the Jacobean period began) saw the height of the Renaissance in England, and prepared the way for further development in the succeeding period. The Jacobean period, covering the years from 1603 to 1688, saw a more thorough assimilation of Italian forms and ideas, together with the beginnings of French influence. The stage was then occupied from 1688 to 1702 by the Dutch-English sovereigns, William and Mary and Queen Anne, during whose reigns influences from Holland were strong. The most notable monument of Renaissance architecture in England is St. Paul's Cathedral in London, commenced under the reign of James I (1603–1625), by the great architect of the Jacobean period, Sir Christopher Wren. St. Paul's Cathedral may be regarded as typical of the English conception of Renaissance architecture, as well as typical of much contemporary work of lesser magnitude. A contemporary architect of equal influence on his times was Inigo Jones, who designed a great many of those small city churches which furnished the inspiration for the designers of our Early American churches. St. Paul's Cathedral was not completed until after the Jacobean period, in the reign of Queen Anne (17021714), and its architect, Wren, lived until 1723, dying during the reign of the first George. The final development in England, partly a belated echo of the Renaissance, took place during the Georgian period, from 1714 to 1830, manifesting itself in what is called the Eighteenth Century Classic Revival, which will be dealt with in the chapter following. The period of the Renaissance in Italy was a period too brilliant intellectually, and too unstable socially and politically, to last indefinitely. It is remarkable, indeed, that it lasted over two centuries. It must always be remembered that those two centuries left to the world of art and architecture a priceless legacy of unsurpassed works of genius. The decadence of Renaissance art is to be seen in the Rococo or Baroque development of the last three quarters of the Seventeenth Century. Ornament was developed to an extravagant and tastelessly disproportionate degree-architectural forms were distorted and perverted in a thousand fantastic and impossible vagaries. Structural principles were ignored, and decoration was the main feature, not the embellishment of Baroque buildings. It has been the habit of most architectural critics to sweepingly condemn all Baroque architecture, but such condemnation is neither intelligent nor merited. Granted that the style may be proved fundamentally illogical on many scores, it evolved many forms of permanent beauty and value, and was, if nothing else, an essentially decorative style, later developed along more rational lines in some phases of the French style of Louis XV. Despite the usual dismissal, then, of the Baroque or Rococo style as a mere architectural curiosity, entirely decadent, and even artistically immoral, it will be found more valuable to place it as a distinct expression of a peculiar idea, and an undeniably interesting page in the sequence of the architectural styles of the past. This chapter, together with the preceding chapter, has been designed, in a necessarily brief manner, to trace and define the evolution of architecture from its ancient forms in Egypt and Assyria, through the CHAPTER IV THE CLASSIC IDEAL A STUDY OF THE IMMORTAL QUALITIES OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE. ITS MANIFESTATIONS IN SEVERAL "CLASSIC" REVIVALS. THE IMPORTANT PLACE OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE IN THE DESIGN OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS. THE SCHOOL OF THE BEAUX ARTS, ITS TEACHINGS AND ITS WIDE INFLUENCE CLASSIC DERIVATIONS AND THE BEAUX-ARTS SCHOOL IN N tracing the course of the Classic Ideal, and in recognising its recurrence in the most important of modern buildings, one is impelled to inquire: What, exactly, is the Classic Ideal? The answer is a simple one, yet fraught with great significance in architecture. The Classic Ideal is the Ideal of Order. It is because Classic architecture was based on the idea of order that it was characterised by purity, and its order and purity, being immortal qualities, have caused Classic architecture not only to live, but to stand to-day as the rational basis of the architectural design of all time. Gothic architecture was ingenious-a magnificent and beautiful experiment. Classic architecture was not experimental-its principles were as sound as Euclid in their day, and have lost none of that soundness in the centuries which have passed. In the architecture of the Renaissance there were many paradoxes, even shams, much earnestness, but a minor amount of the experimental quality of Gothic architecture. There was, however, enough of Classic order in Renaissance architecture to give it some degree |