France was the first country which at the commencement of the seven teenth century directly adopted the symmetrical palatial architecture that proceeded from Italy, and the latest French works of the sixteenth cen tury noticeably tended toward this end. In 1611, Jacques de Brosse built the Luxembourg Palace at Paris for Maria de' Medici; this struc tore 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 (i613-1619), the work of Eucharins Holz schnher, 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. Vet 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 recog nized the influence of the naïve 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 predom inate. It reaches an effect of magnificent spaciousness, but is at the same time so permeated by baroque elements that we can scarcely enu merate it with the before-mentioned works in which the Middle Ages are still prominent.
Waldstein the palaces of Prague, the Waldstein (1623), built by the grand duke of Friedland, stands out conspicuously. The square court and external façade 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 mag nificence 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 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 aban doned. 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 Amesbury 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 approx imate the Italian manner. This mansard storey rose over a horizontal cornice, and above it the roof was almost flat. The rest of his architec ture closely followed Palladio without entirely accepting the exaggerations of his model. One of his principal works is the Chateau AIaison, 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 car ried 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 nation ality than at any other period, yet that church-construction also partici pated 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 im possible to give the date at which this influence began to be powerful. This spirit speaks in many of the before-nentioned 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 164o; this is an elongated basilica whose nave is borne upon eight couples of marble columns.