Some theatre-architects who made the structure most sober decorated the auditorium pompously, designed the decorations of the stage, and partly painted it themselves. We have already mentioned the Bibbienas. Giuseppe, son of Francesco Bibbiena, worked in Vienna, Dresden, and Ber lin upon the theatres and for the court ceremonials, and his son Carlo was employed as a theatre-decorator at Baireuth, Brunswick, Munich, and Berlin, as well as in England, Sweden, Denmark, France, Spain, and Russia.
Under Frederick the Great building was actively prosecuted in Berlin and Potsdam. W. von Knobelsdorff built the opera-house at Berlin in 1741, the castle and the one-storey Sans-Sonci, at Potsdam, and Miring exe cuted the new palace. Karl von Gontard built the marble palace at Pots dam, as well as the two churches on the Gensdarmenmarkt at Berlin. The cupolas of these churches are converted by a high tambour of small diameter into a veritable tower with Corinthian temple-fronts below on three sides of it, while to the fourth, which is absolutely plain, a small church is attached, so as to make it clearly evident that the places of worship were but a pretext for the erection of two domical towers for the adornment of the square.
On the other hand, St. Hedwig's Church at Berlin is weighted down with a simple round dome of great diameter, for, though a correspond ingly large space can at a reasonable cost be enclosed in this way, the unadorned structure iu its soberness contributes little to the adornment of the city; notwithstanding its Corinthian temple-portico.
The University of Berlin, three storeys high, with a central struc ture and two projecting wings embracing a fore-court closed by a pali sade, is magnificently simple in its lines, but remarkably plain. It was built (1754-1764) for Prince Heinrich, brother of Frederick the Great.
The return to classicism progressed rather quickly, but not abruptly.
We have already said that the castle at Stuttgart inclines in this direc tion, and we have now to state that the University of Berlin exhibits the same tendency, while St. Sulpice at Paris is another instance.
This direction is still more definitely taken by the magnificent domed Church of Ste. Genevieve at Paris, erected by Soufflot; it was commenced in 1756 and finished in 179o. This, like many other churches built since St. Peter's at Rome, especially those at Berlin just described, fol lows a new system by which a high tambour dominates both arms of the cross and the dome and gives the entire domed structure the appear ance of a tower (f/. 48, figs. 4, 5).
In 1763-1772 the Place de la Concorde—then called Place de Louis XV.—was laid out. On the north side of this two uniform palaces were erected for no other purpose than the decoration of the Place. These show a notable return to classicism, and have colonnades two storeys high. The architect was Jacques Gabriel, a pupil of the younger Mansard.
The royal library at Berlin, built in 178o, shows in its fantastic forms the tendency to replace straight lines by curved ones wherever possible. It forms a mixture of the baroque and the rococo in which the entire fan cifulness of both is reproduced, but, like another similar work of that period, it is out of place in that sober world in which the tendency toward classicism is everywhere apparent. Only a few years after the death of Fred erick II. there was erected in Berlin a structure belonging to this manner that gave the deathblow to the rococo, and to all other mannerisms that still remained. The Brandenburg Gate of Berlin (5/. 49, fig. 5), built (r7S9–r 793) by J. G. Langhans in imitation of the Propylaea at Athens, exhibits on a large scale the return to pure and sober forms, and did not, therefore, fail to exercise a decisive influence.