GERMAN RENAISSANCE.
In Germany no court was powerful enough to introduce the new style. Isolated instances were not wanting, but its general adoption could have proceeded only from the heart of the people, who, however, clung tenaciously to old traditions, and whose peculiarities had found definite expression in the Late Gothic; so that they could neither compre hend the new style nor warmly welcome it. Purely artistic though the Late Gothic in many respects undoubtedly is, it yet was not evolved out of the intention to attain artistic beauty in an ideal sense.
The genius of the Germans was not so ideally constituted: quaintness satisfied their wants, and they accepted naturally as quaintness the bizarre ornamentation with which the master played who found its employment quite natural because he had so learned it in his workshop. But what ever was in this manner given and accepted as quaint must have always sprung from the essence of the national genius. The contrast between the Germans and the Italians is thus anew brought clearly before the eye.
The influence of classical studies—which tended to revive the genius and sense of the ancient paganism that had been subverted by Christianity —was, whether consciously or unconsciously, the antithesis of the teach ings of Christianity, and was the sole cause which led Italy to take up again the classical art-forms; and it followed as a necessary consequence that their entire restoration, so far as outward circumstances and the genius of the people would permit, must be the result.
This spirit had taken hold of a great part of the people of Italy. A gulf had long separated the views of the higher classes, ecclesiastical as well as secular, from those of the great mass of the people: a " cultured" class, in the modern sense, had been developed that had increased in Italy and had embraced all the higher ranks. Not so in Germany, where even the higher classes had remained true to the forms and beliefs of the people—where even the refinements which were proper to each form of culture according to the degree of its development were at home not only in the ranks of the great, but also in those of the bourgeoisie, who were equally conspicuous in all the good and inferior qualities of conservatism.
Restricted Acceptance of the Renaissance.—Thus in Germany only isolated elements tended toward that new style which had developed quite independently among the neighboring people—that new style which had been evolved calmly and without effort into a national peculiarity of the Italians, but which in consequence of the different climate and genius of the Germans had been viewed by the latter without the inclination to give up the accustomed style. Still, those classes who were in positive contact with the Italians were compelled to receive impressions from their neighbors. The imperial court was one. It was not accidental that the emperor Maximilian bad an intelligent love for the beautiful, and that he cherished it for its own sake: this was through the influence of Italy and Burgundy. It was not chance that the artists in the perfection of whose skill he was interested experienced an ardent desire to see Italy and its works of art. German artists were not accustomed to visit Italy; and if any had previously been led thither on the pilgrimage usual to the guilds of all the trades, they had brought back no definite impression. But the power of the imperial court was small in Germany, and its influence was still smaller; the emperor himself was therefore compelled to follow the bent of the German burghers, and could not wander into ways lie would certainly have taken had not he and his followers become possessed of the prevalent German conservatism.
On the confines of Germany and Italy, in the Tyrol, the new style naturally exercised a deep influence at an early date, but this is so natural that this offshoot of Italian art is of little importance, since even the boun daries of the language are so variously intermixed that the termination of the Italian elements can scarcely be fixed.