THE CLASSIC REVIVALS IN EUROPE:THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

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CHAPTER XXV.

THE CLASSIC REVIVALS IN EUROPE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson. Also Chateau, Histoire et caractères de

l'architecture en France; and Lübke, Geschichte der Architektur. (For the most part,

however, recourse must be had to the general histories of architecture, and to

monographs on special cities or buildings.)

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By the end of the seventeenth century the

Renaissance, properly speaking, had run its course in Europe. The increasing servility

of its imitation of antique models had exhausted its elasticity and originality. Taste

rapidly declined before the growth of the industrial and commercial spirit in the

eighteenth century. The ferment of democracy and the disquiet of far-reaching

political changes had begun to preoccupy the minds of men to the detriment of the

arts. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the extravagances of the

Rococo, Jesuit, and Louis XV. styles had begun to pall upon the popular taste. The

creative spirit was dead, and nothing seemed more promising as a corrective for

these extravagances than a return to classic models. But the demand was for a literal

copying of the arcades and porticos of Rome, to serve as frontispieces for buildings in

which modern requirements should be accommodated to these antique exteriors,

instead of controlling the design. The result was a manifest gain in the splendor of

the streets and squares adorned by these highly decorative frontispieces, but at the

expense of convenience and propriety in the buildings themselves. While this

academic spirit too often sacrificed logic and originality to an arbitrary symmetry and

to the supposed canons of Roman design, it also, on the other hand, led to a

stateliness and dignity in the planning, especially in the designing of vestibules,

stairs, and halls, which render many of the public buildings it produced well worthy

of study. The architecture of the Roman Revival was pompous and artificial, but

seldom trivial, and its somewhat affected grandeur was a welcome relief from the

dull extravagance of the styles it replaced.

THE GREEK REVIVAL. The Roman revival was, however, displaced in England and

Germany by the Greek Revival, which set in near the close of the eighteenth century.

This was the result of a newly awakened interest in the long-neglected monuments of

Attic art which the discoveries of Stuart and Revett--sent out in 1732 by the London

Society of Dilettanti--had once more made known to the world. It led to a veritable

furore in England for Greek Doric and Ionic columns, which were applied

indiscriminately to every class of buildings, with utter disregard of propriety. The

British taste was at this time at its lowest ebb, and failed to perceive the poverty of

Greek architecture when deprived of its proper adornments of carving and sculpture,

which were singularly lacking in the British examples. Nevertheless the Greek style in

England had a long run of popular favor, yielding only during the reign of the present

sovereign to the so-called Victorian Gothic, a revival of mediæval forms. In Germany

the Greek Revival was characterized by a more cultivated taste and a more rational

application of its forms, which were often freely modified to suit modern needs. In

France, where the Roman Revival under Louis XV. had produced fairly satisfactory

results, and where the influence of the Royal School of Fine Arts (École des Beaux-

Arts) tended to perpetuate the principles of Roman design, the Greek Revival found

no footing. The Greek forms were seen to be too severe and intractable for present

requirements. About 1830, however, a modified style of design, known since as the

Néo-Grec, was introduced by the exertions of a small coterie of talented architects;

and though its own life was short, it profoundly influenced French art in the

direction of freedom and refinement for a long time afterward. In Italy there was

hardly anything in the nature of a true revival of either Roman or Greek forms. The

few important works of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were

conceived in the spirit of the late Renaissance, and took from the prevalent revival of

classicism elsewhere merely a greater correctness of detail, not any radical change of

form or spirit.

FIG. 198.--BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON.

ENGLAND. There was, strictly speaking, no Roman revival in Great Britain. The

modified Palladian style of Wren and Gibbs and their successors continued until

superseded by the Greek revival. The first fruit of the new movement seems to have

been the Bank of England at London, by Sir John Soane (1788). In this edifice the

Greco-Roman order of the round temple at Tivoli was closely copied, and applied to a

long façade, too low for its length and with no sufficient stylobate, but fairly effective

with its recessed colonnade and unpierced walls. The British Museum, by Robert

Smirke (Fig. 198), was a more ambitious essay in a more purely Greek style. Its

colossal Ionic colonnade was, however, a mere frontispiece, applied to a badly

planned and commonplace building, from which it cut off needed light. The more

modest but appropriate columnar façade to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge,

by Bassevi, was a more successful attempt in the same direction, better proportioned

and avoiding the incongruity of modern windows in several stories. These have

always been the stumbling-block of the revived Greek style. The difficulties they raise

are avoided, however, in buildings presenting but two stories, the order being

applied to the upper story, upon a high stylobate serving as a basement. The High

School and the Royal Institution at Edinburgh, and the University at London, by

Wilkins, are for this reason, if for no other, superior to the British Museum and other

many-storied Anglo-Greek edifices. In spite of all difficulties, however, the English

extended the applications of the style with doubtful success not only to all manner of

public buildings, but also to country residences. Carlton House, Bowden Park, and

Grange House are instances of this misapplication of Greek forms. Neither did it

prove more tractable for ecclesiastical purposes. St. Pancras's Church at London, and

several churches by Thomson (181775), in Glasgow, though interesting as

experiments in such adaptation, are not to be commended for imitation. The most

successful of all British Greek designs is perhaps St. George's Hall at Liverpool (Fig.

199), whose imposing peristyle and porches are sufficiently Greek in spirit and detail

to class it among the works of the Greek Revival. But its great hall and its interior

composition are really Roman and not Greek, emphasizing the teaching of experience

that Greek architecture does not lend itself to the exigencies of modern civilization to

nearly the same extent as the Roman.

FIG. 199.--ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LIVERPOOL.

GERMANY. During the eighteenth century the classic revival in Germany, which at

first followed Roman precedents (as in the columns carved with spirally ascending

reliefs in front of the church of St. Charles Borromeo, at Vienna), was directed into

the channel of Greek imitation by the literary works of Winckelmann, Lessing,

Goethe, and others, as well as by the interest aroused by the discoveries of Stuart

and Revett. The Brandenburg Gate at Berlin (1784, by Langhans) was an early

example of this Hellenism in architecture, and one of its most successful applications

to civic purposes. Without precisely copying any Greek structure, it was evidently

inspired from the Athenian Propylæa, and nothing in its purpose is foreign to the

style employed. The greatest activity in the style came later, however, and was

greatly stimulated by the achievements of Fr. Schinkel (17711841), one of the

greatest of modern German architects. While in the domical church of St. Nicholas at

Potsdam, he employed Roman forms in a modernized Roman conception, and

followed in one or two other buildings the principles of the Renaissance, his

predilections were for Greek architecture. His masterpiece was the Museum at

Berlin, with an imposing portico of 18 Ionic columns (Fig. 200). This building with

its fine rotunda was excellently planned, and forms, in conjunction with the New

Museum by Stuhler (184355), a noble palace of art, to whose monumental

requirements and artistic purpose the Greek colonnades and pediments were not

inappropriate. Schinkel's greatest successor was Leo von Klenze (17841864), whose

more textual reproductions of Greek models won him great favor and wide

employment. The Walhalla near Ratisbon is a modernized Parthenon, internally

vaulted with glass; elegant externally, but too obvious a plagiarism to be greatly

admired. The Ruhmeshalle at Munich, a double L partly enclosing a colossal statue

of Bavaria, and devoted to the commemoration of Bavaria's great men, is copied from

no Greek building, though purely Greek in design and correct to the smallest detail.

In the Glyptothek (Sculpture Gallery), in the same city, the one distinctively Greek

feature introduced by Klenze, an Ionic portico, is also the one inappropriate note in

the design. The Propylæa at Munich, by the same (Fig. 201), and the Court Theatre

at Berlin, by Schinkel, are other important examples of the style. The latter is

externally one of the most beautiful theatres in Europe, though less ornate than

many. Schinkel's genius was here remarkably successful in adapting Greek details to

the exigent difficulties of theatre design, and there is no suggestion of copying any

known Greek building.

FIG. 200.--THE OLD MUSEUM, BERLIN.

In Vienna the one notable monument of the Classic Revival is the

Reichsrathsgebäude or Parliament House, by Th. Hansen (1843), an imposing two-

storied composition with a lofty central colonnade and lower side-wings, harmonious

in general proportions and pleasingly varied in outline and mass.

FIG. 201.--THE PROPYLÆA, MUNICH.

In general, the Greek Revival in Germany presents the aspect of a sincere striving

after beauty, on the part of a limited number of artists of great talent, misled by the

idea that the forms of a dead civilization could be galvanized into new life in the

service of modern needs. The result was disappointing, in spite of the excellent

planning, admirable construction and carefully studied detail of these buildings, and

the movement here as elsewhere was foredoomed to failure.

FIG. 202.--PLAN OF PANTHÉON, PARIS.

FRANCE. In France the Classic Revival, as we have seen, had made its appearance

during the reign of Louis XV. in a number of important monuments which expressed

the protest of their authors against the caprice of the Rococo style then in vogue. The

colonnades of the Garde-Meuble, the façade of St. Sulpice, and the coldly beautiful

Panthéon (Figs. 202, 203) testified to the conviction in the most cultured minds of

the time that Roman grandeur was to be attained only by copying the forms of

Roman architecture with the closest possible approach to correctness. In the

Panthéon, the greatest ecclesiastical monument of its time in France (otherwise

known as the church of Ste. Genéviève), the spirit of correct classicism dominates the

interior as well as the exterior. It is a Greek cross, measuring 362 × 267 feet, with a

dome 265 feet high, and internally 69 feet in diameter. The four arms have domical

vaulting and narrow aisles separated by Corinthian columns. The whole interior is a

cold but extremely elegant composition. The most notable features of the exterior are

its imposing portico of colossal Corinthian columns and the fine peristyle which

surrounds the drum of the dome, giving it great dignity and richness of effect.

FIG. 203.--EXTERIOR OF PANTHÉON, PARIS.

The dome, which is of stone throughout, has three shells, the intermediate shell

serving to support the heavy stone lantern. The architect was Soufflot (171381).

The Grand Théâtre, at Bordeaux (1773, by Victor Louis), one of the largest and

finest theatres in Europe, was another product of this movement, its stately

colonnade forming one of the chief ornaments of the city. Under Louis XVI. there

was a temporary reaction from this somewhat pompous affectation of antique

grandeur; but there were few important buildings erected during that unhappy reign,

and the reaction showed itself mainly in a more delicate and graceful style of interior

decoration. It was reserved for the Empire to set the seal of official approval on the

Roman Revival.

The Arch of Triumph of the Carrousel, behind the Tuileries, by Percier and Fontaine,

the magnificent Arc de l'Étoile, at the summit of the Avenue of the Champs Elysées,

by Chalgrin; the wing begun by Napoleon to connect the Tuileries with the Louvre on

the land side, and the church of the Madeleine, by Vignon, erected as a temple to the

heroes of the Grande Armée, were all designed, in accordance with the expressed will

of the Emperor himself, in a style as Roman as the requirements of each case would

permit. All these monuments, begun between 1806 and 1809, were completed after

the Restoration. The Arch of the Carrousel is a close copy of Roman models; that of

the Étoile (Fig. 204) was a much more original design, of colossal dimensions. Its

admirable proportions, simple composition and striking sculptures give it a place

among the noblest creations of its class. The Madeleine (Fig. 205), externally a

Roman Corinthian temple of the largest size, presents internally an almost Byzantine

conception with the three pendentive domes that vault its vast nave, but all the

details are Roman. However suitable for a pantheon or mausoleum, it seems

strangely inappropriate as a design for a Christian church. To these monuments

should be added the Bourse or Exchange, by Brongniart, heavy in spite of its

Corinthian peristyle, and the river front of the Corps Législatif or Palais Bourbon, by

Poyet, the only extant example of a dodecastyle portico with a pediment. All of these

designs are characterized by great elegance of detail and excellence of execution, and

however inappropriate in style to modern uses, they add immensely to the splendor

of the French capital. Unquestionably no feature can take the place of a Greek or

Roman colonnade as an embellishment for broad avenues and open squares, or as the

termination of an architectural vista.

FIG. 204.--ARC DE L'ÉTOILE, PARIS.

The Greek revival took little hold of the Parisian imagination. Its forms were too

cold, too precise and fixed, too intractable to modern requirements to appeal to the

French taste. It counts but one notable monument, the church of St. Vincent de

Paul, by Hittorff, who sought to apply to this design the principles of Greek external

polychromy; but the frescoes and ornaments failed to withstand the Parisian climate,

and were finally erased. The Néo-Grec movement already referred to, initiated by

Duc, Duban, and Labrouste about 1830, aimed only to introduce into modern design

the spirit and refinement, the purity and delicacy of Greek art, not its forms (Fig.

206). Its chief monuments were the remodelling, by Duc, of the Palais de Justice, of

which the new west façade is the most striking single feature; the beautiful Library

of the École des Beaux-Arts, by Duban; the library of Ste. Genéviève, by Labrouste,

in which a long façade is treated without a pilaster or column, simple arches over a

massive basement forming the dominant motive, while in the interior a system of

iron construction with glazed domes controls the design; and the commemorative

Colonne Juillet, by Duc, the most elegant and appropriate of all modern memorial

columns. All these buildings, begun between 1830 and 1850 and completed at

various dates, are distinguished by a remarkable purity and freedom of conception

and detail, quite unfettered by the artificial trammels of the official academic style

then prevalent.

FIG. 205.--THE MADELEINE, PARIS.

THE CLASSIC REVIVAL ELSEWHERE. The other countries of Europe have little to

show in the way of imitations of classic monuments or reproductions of Roman

colonnades. In Italy the church of S. Francesco di Paola, at Naples, in quasi-

imitation of the Pantheon at Rome, with wing-colonnades, and the Superga, at Turin

(1706, by Ivara); the façade of the San Carlo Theatre, at Naples, and the Braccio

Nuovo of the Vatican (1817, by Stern) are the monuments which come the nearest to

the spirit and style of the Roman Revival. Yet in each of these there is a large

element of originality and freedom of treatment which renders doubtful their

classification as examples of that movement.

A reflection of the Munich school is seen in the modern public buildings of Athens,

designed in some cases by German architects, and in others by native Greeks. The

University, the Museum buildings, the Academy of Art and Science, and other

edifices exemplify fairly successful efforts to adapt the severe details of classic Greek

art to modern windowed structures. They suffer somewhat from the too liberal use of

stucco in place of marble, and from the conscious affectation of an extinct style. But

they are for the most part pleasing and monumental designs, adding greatly to the

beauty of the modern city.

FIG. 206.--DOORWAY, ÉCOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS.

FIG. 207.--ST. ISAAC'S CATHEDRAL, ST. PETERSBURG.

In Russia, during and after the reign of Peter the Great (16891725), there appeared

a curious mixture of styles. A style analogous to the Jesuit in Italy and the

Churrigueresque in Spain was generally prevalent, but it was in many cases modified

by Muscovite traditions into nondescript forms like those of the Kremlin, at Moscow,

or the less extravagant Citadel Church and Smolnoy Monastery at St. Petersburg.

Along with this heavy and barbarous style, which prevails generally in the numerous

palaces of the capital, finished in stucco with atrocious details, a more severe and

classical spirit is met with. The church of the Greek Rite at St. Petersburg combines

a Roman domical interior with an exterior of the Greek Doric order. The Church of

Our Lady of Kazan has a semicircular colonnade projecting from its transept,

copying as nearly as may be the colonnades in front of St. Peter's. But the greatest

classic monument in Russia is the Cathedral of St. Isaac (Fig. 207), at St.

Petersburg, a vast rectangular edifice with four Roman Corinthian pedimental

colonnades projecting from its faces, and a dome with a peristyle crowning the

whole. Despite many defects of detail, and the use of cast iron for the dome, which

pretends to be of marble, this is one of the most impressive churches of its size in

Europe. Internally it displays the costliest materials in extraordinary profusion, while

externally its noble colonnades go far to redeem its bare attic and the material of its

dome. The Palace of the Grand Duke Michael, which reproduces, with

improvements, Gabriel's colonnades of the Garde Meuble at Paris on its garden

front, is a nobly planned and commendable design, agreeably contrasting with the

debased architecture of many of the public buildings of the city. The Admiralty with

its Doric pilasters, and the New Museum, by von Klenze of Munich, in a skilfully

modified Greek style, with effective loggias, are the only other monuments of the

classic revival in Russia which can find mention in a brief sketch like this. Both are

notable and in many respects admirable buildings, in part redeeming the vulgarity

which is unfortunately so prevalent in the architecture of St. Petersburg.

The MONUMENTS of the Classic Revival have been referred to in the foregoing text

at sufficient length to preclude the necessity of further enumeration here.

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