IV. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, FLANDERS AND HOLLAND In the 16th century, Germany resisted, more than France or Spain, the Italian influence. The classic spirit in art was appar ently less congenial to her civilization, which lacked the Latin basis, and she had not suffered, like France and Spain, the disinte grating influences of a long destructive war which, by weakening the mediaeval and national traditions, had prepared the way for a new and alien art. The Italian motives appeared sporadically— f or example, in a Florentine belvedere built in Prague in 1536 and in the Lombardesque wing of the castle at Heidelberg, built in 1556—but the Renaissance had to await the end of the 16th century to win a wide acceptance north of the Alps.
About 1580 the Baroque forms of Alessi were introduced into Germany. These forms, which were understood more as a system of decoration than as elements in mass composition, became im mediately popular in the South German cities : broken pediments, scrolls, consoles, cartouches, the human figure placed in a niche, began to appear in profusion on the facades of churches and houses which in composition were still mediaeval. This fusion of Gothic picturesqueness with the sophisticated Baroque ornament gave to this first phase of German Renaissance an altogether unique character. The great stepped gables of town houses and the transept ends or facades of churches, wholly mediaeval in mass and line, flower out at the top into a rich encrustation of modelled form in which all the elements of classic architecture seem to be melted together. Examples of such designs are the Merienkirche, at Wolfenbuttel, the Gewendhaus at Brunswick (1592) and the Pellerhaus, in Nuremberg (1625).
After the Thirty Years' War, which ended in 1648 and devas tated the greater part of the Rhine countries, German Renais sance architecture entered a new phase. The Baroque spirit gained a more complete ascendancy and in many localities mediaevalism entirely disappeared. Naturally the Baroque was more completely accepted in the southern and Catholic countries where Italian architects, brought into Germany by the Jesuits, built, or helped to build, many churches and palaces. Along the Rhine the French influence was felt, but it was not until the 18th century (see MODERN ARCHITECTURE : 18th and 19th Cen turies) that Germany turned directly to France for artistic inspira tion. In that century the architecture of Versailles was widely imitated in the German courts, achieving there a compromise, or fusion, with the Italian Baroque. The result was a vigorous and original style, often piquant and full of that element of "surprise" which is a result of Baroque freedom and movement.
Germany, having a larger number of capital cities—there were more than 30o in the 16th century—developed a greater variety of local styles than any other country. Vienna was of course the most important centre. The relief that was felt when in 1685 the Turks were driven from before her walls, the prosperity fostered by Leopold I. and Charles VI., and the renewed faith of the Catholic reaction, found expression there in a series of remark able monuments. Fischer von Erlach and Lukas von Hildebrandt, the two great architects of Vienna, transformed the mediaeval city, as Bernini had transformed Rome, with fountains and pub lic places, with majestic churches, vast palaces and astonishing gardens. In their hands the exuberant Baroque, touched with an
oriental fantasy, reached a magnificence altogether consonant with the gorgeous imperialism and the fervid piety of the times. The Karlskirche (1717-37) and the Hof bibliothek (1736), by von Erlach, and the Belvedere (1713-16), by Hildebrandt, are the most famous and perhaps most characteristic examples of this Viennese Renaissance.
After Vienna, the smaller courts of Dresden and Munich fur nished important opportunities for the Renaissance architect. In Dresden, Popplemann (1662-1736) built the court of the Zwinger palace (t , an extraordinary assembly of fantastic pavilion, bizarre planting and agitated sculpture. The Frauenkirche, in Dresden (1726-43), by George Bahr, is an original, free and virile design, perhaps the greatest achievement of the German Renaissance. In Munich, where the Italian architect Agostino Barelli had built a Neapolitan church, the Theatinerkirche (1667 75), the Wittelsbachs employed the French architect, Francois Cuvilliers, to add to their somewhat grandiose palace the alto gether delightful Residenz-theatre (1752-60). Salzburg, with its cathedral (1614-34), its University church, and its Mirabel Schloss, is one of the loveliest of Baroque towns; Prague has the great Wallenstein palace (1673-173o), the work of the Italian Marini, as well as the more Teutonic Kinsky palace, the work of the talented architect Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer ; and in Pots dam, where, under Frederick the Great, French influence is most felt, the palace of Sans Souci ( 716) achieves a delicacy and grace ful freedom certainly not excelled in contemporary France.
To this architecture of the city and court there is added the architecture of the monasteries. Placed picturesquely among the hills of the Danube or the Rhine, these vast buildings offered opportunities most congenial to the spirit of 17th century archi tecture. Melk (1707-36) is perhaps the most impressive; a colossal mass which commands the Danube from the top of a mighty cliff and throws against the sky a superb tangle of modelled spire and dome.
In Flanders and Holland the development of architecture in the Renaissance was not essentially different from that of North Germany. The Jesuit influence was felt in Flanders and the de velopment of churches of the Il Gesu type, such as the church of St. Michael, in Louvain (1650) was parallel to the contem porary development in South Germany and France. In Holland, as in Germany, the stepped gables of the town houses were transformed by the addition of Baroque detail but the use of brick and of quoins and the need of economy often gave them a more sober aspect than their Germanic cousins. At times the French influence was felt, as, for example, in the Hotel de Ville in Antwerp 0560, a design in which superimposed columns enframe round-arched windows with a gracefulness and distinc tion in detail that recalls the work of Lescot