Renaissance feeling was introduced into Spain during the latter years of the 15th century by wandering Italian sculptors, but a school of native artists soon developed, and during the 16th century an individual school of Renaissance dominance was complete, despite the Italian impetus given by the campaign of Charles V., 1500-58, and the fanatical Romanism of his son Philip II., 1527-1598, whose palace monastery, the Escorial, by Juan Bautista (16th century) and Juan de Herrera (153o-97), is a stark and lonely monument to Philip II.'s Italian taste. Else where, the Moorish influence was so strong as to modify the Italian forms profoundly ; Moorish craftsmen controlled the pot teries and often built the buildings. Moreover, perhaps due to the bleak and sombre character of so large a part of the Spanish territory, the emotional quality of the Spanish Renaissance work has a sharp pungency quite different from the usual graciousness of the Italian feeling. The style in Spain may be divided into three parts—the early Renaissance, or Plateresque (q.v.), in which Moorish influence is marked; the classic or Griego-Romano, a short and sterile attempt to introduce strict Italian classicism; and the Baroque or Churrigueresque, so-called from one of its main exponents, Jose Churriguera (died 1725). It was in this final style that the Spanish temperament found itself most at home. Particularly characteristic of the Spanish Renaissance is the work in certain of the minor arts, especially in iron work, as shown in the magnificent church screens, or rejeria (q.v.) ; in furniture, in which iron and wood were frequently combined; and in stamped leather, for which Spain was famous.
In France, the history of the early Renaissance shows a style originally essentially an imported court fashion, gradually per meating all French life. The Italian campaigns of Charles VIII., 1470-1498, Louis XII., 1462-1515, and Francis I., had given the French court an intimate knowledge of the com parative luxury, cleanliness and monumentality of the Italian cities. Italian artists were invited to the court; Italian decorators and architects helped Francis I. in his great building schemes. Yet this court fashion had to compete with a vivid and vital flamboyant, late Gothic style, and much of the charm of the early French Renaissance results from the naive, yet brilliantly exe cuted combinations of the two influences. During the reign of Henry II., 1519-1559, the classic ideal was dominant, though Gothic forms were still in use. Under Henry IV., 1553-1610, though the Gothic had at last passed away, Baroque freedom controlled design, and under Louis XIII., Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVI. whose reigns stretched from 16io to 1793, there was a continual see-saw between academic classicism and imagina tive freedom. (See LOUIS STYLES.) From the beginning a court style, the French Renaissance remained essentially a luxurious style. All of the arts of luxury
flourished. Rich textiles—tapestries and brocades—are charac teristic, and the lavish furniture was copied all over Europe, especially during the i8th century. The development of pottery, first privately, and later under government auspices, culminated in the magnificent porcelains of Sevres.
The development of the Renaissance in the rest of Europe was marked by common features. In England and the Teutonic countries, there was not only a late vital Gothic style, but defi nite characteristics of national taste and vastly different climatic and geographical conditions. Yet the humanistic impetus of the Renaissance existed almost everywhere and the beauty of the naturalistic painting and sculpture, as well as the exquisite pro ductions of Italian goldsmiths, formed a continual invitation toward a change in artistic ideals. Thus, despite occasional purely classic work by Italian artists, such as Torregiano's tomb of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey, London (1515), the early Renaissance in north Europe is chiefly characterized by the gradual creeping in of misunderstood classic decorative forms, often caricatured. In none of these countries did classicism be come dominant until the 17th century, and even then it is coloured by local taste. Thus in Germany, the picturesqueness of late Gothic decorative design controlled all of the arts down to the i8th century and even the pseudo-classic of the French inspired Rococo embodied many picturesque elements. In Eng land, due to the influence of Inigo Jones, 1572-1652, and Sir Christopher Wren, 1632-1723, at least in architecture, classic forms were used with purity and unusual correctness. In Ger many and Flanders, on the other hand, Baroque elements were favoured, especially in woodcarving and the minor arts generally; and through the diffusion of Flemish craftsmen consequent upon the confused religious and political conditions during the 17th century, these northern varieties of Baroque forms were broad cast over Europe, influencing markedly the later Renaissance work in England and recognizably, though to a less extent, that of France and Spain.
This confusion of international influences marked the Renais sance of the i8th century, the style movements in France being generally paralleled by those in other countries. Yet the er ratic swing between license and classicism was indicative of a decaying style vitality, and new archaeological discoveries were giving to the classicism of the end of the century a motivation quite different from the simpler Renaissance tradition that was dying. With the fall of the French court, in the French revolu tion, more than a political system was swept away, for with it went the last vestiges of Renaissance tradition. See BAROQUE