races and because in this way modifications were early introduced, — all of which the ardent partisans of the style term decadence, — even in Gothic art does not a church of the thirteenth century closely resemble another church of the same century? Is not a German cathedral of the thirteenth century much like an English or French cathedral?
During the modern period, on the contrary, we find an Italian art, a Spanish, French, Flemish, English and German art, each sharply defined. Interchanging and interpenetration of forms, of course, occur on all sides, hut at the same time there are very pronounced differences which never lessen in the least. Every national art preserves a physiognomy which continues to be characteristic of it, and yet it appropriates elements from without, transforming them to suit itself; France came under Italian influence, and later borrowed from the Hispano-Flemish school; but, on the other hand, the French school has made its way into foreign lands. Hence come the continual modifications which, though marked and fertile, do not make it possible for one modern style to be confounded with any other.
The admirable suppleness of modern art has enabled architecture to adapt itself to all the variations in manners, of every people and every generation, and to translate them with marvellous accuracy.
The small mediæval Italian republics, hardly out of their perpetual conflicts, which were all the more bitter because the opponents in every case were near relatives, became aristocratic, but they were still divided and powerless: a brilliant court existed at Rome, the centre of wealth and home of the arts, but it was stripped of all military and territorial powers, and woman was excluded from it; in Spain, the vastness of the governmental possessions concealed the precarious character of the monarchical authority, which was, in fact, firmly established nowhere except in the two Castiles; the other provinces considered themselves as almost independent and were restive under the Castilian yoke; the sombre Spanish genius prescribed the most gloomy existence ever known in a European court.
In Germany, that individual spirit was maintained which had so long kept life in the free cities and independent electorates; these were but poorly held together by the imperial bond; while in Austria the struggle between the various nationalities — Germanic, Slavic and Hungarian — and the incessant warfare against the Turk had so far prevented the formation of a brilliant and polished court; the prestige of the imperial sceptre was little more than a vain show, with no strongly established authority behind it. Each of these peoples had its Renaissance architecture, which reflected its social condition. Italy had her palaces, which were mainly colossal galleries for the display of paintings and sculptures; Germany and Flanders had their communal buildings, as Spain her Escurial.
Monarchical France followed quite a different line. With the reign of the Valois monarchs, unification was foreshadowed in the centralization of power; the idea of the fatherland had sprung up. It must not, however, be supposed that it was very deeply rooted as yet; the provinces, it is true, were united, but they were not welded together; the aristocracy still remembered the feudal independence; their antecedents made it impossible for them to comprehend fully the existence of a common interest, superior to their private interests. After the long and violent crisis of the League came the last feeble convulsion of the Fronde, in which the aid of Spain was sought, now by the parliamentary and popular party of the Fronde, now — with far fewer scruples — by the aristocratic party of the Princes; in which we see Turenne, Condé and many others serving, sometimes the Crown, sometimes the insurgents, sometimes the foreigner. It was only under Louis XIV that the task was accomplished and that the idea of duty became absolute; from that moment, these same men are seen turning with horror from the very suggestion of treason to the country, that is to the king, for the king was but the incarnation of the idea of the Fatherland. We have since formed a wholly impersonal notion of the State, and we shrug our shoulders when reminded of Louis XIV’s “ L’état, c’est moi. ” But this shows our lack of comprehension of the ideas of days not our own. This saying of Louis XIV merely puts into words the universal feeling of the time, and the men of the seventeenth century would not have understood any other. Therefore, after 1710, notwithstanding reverses, notwithstanding the mistakes committed, notwithstanding the prevailing misery, no one flinched before the threatened invasion of combined Europe; all France rallied close about the old king, overwhelmed by public calamity
as by domestic sorrows, standing alone among the tombs of his sons and grandsons; from the far away provinces the people watched with respect, as the symbol of the nation exhausted but still determined to battle, the septuagenarian monarch burdened with maladies and almost in the death throes, but erect, gathering his failing forces to face the enemy, and eager to take his place at the head of his last army.
Society formed under the influence of this strongly centralized royalty had its vices; they are known to all. It was, nevertheless, an object of admiration to all Europe, and France long owed to it her prestige. It was preeminently military, and at the same time most refined. The aristocracy had been definitely subdued, and now looked to the king alone for official positions, honor and fortune, all of which were to be obtained by army service; every spring they left Versailles, the city and the chateaux to take commands in the army for a campaign. A few sieges were attempted, a few battles were fought, under orders of the princes of the blood; in the autumn, when the troops were settled in winter quarters, they returned to the court to receive their rewards and resume a life of pleasure. They played the part of courtier, they carried on intrigues with perfect grace, though often touched with perfidy; they joined the king in his repasts and his sports, they attended the fetes, masked-balls, carnivals, p lays and ballets; in the intervals they frequented the by-streets, where wit had its abode. Over these pleasures of a leisure hour woman presided as queen; nobility, refinement and gallantry reigned in the art of speech, qualities demanded at the court of the queen-mother, and which were also developed under the influence of the Princess Henrietta of England, 1 and, later, of the great favorites. To this court of Versailles, the head of a vast country, which was already well ordered, and was organized as no other European State had yet been, flocked the most illustrious army leaders and their officers, prelates, princes of the blood, ministers, important government officials and ambassadors of all the powers, who bestowed upon it a splendor that has never been equalled. The city imitated the court; in the provinces, the governors or their lieutenants officially opened the estates, received, kept open table and gave fetes during their tenure of office, thus reproducing in the most remote parts of the kingdom a picture of that Versailles on which the eyes of France and Europe were fixed. From the highest to the lowest, in the most distant castle, this sumptuous, polished and refined life was copied.
What were the architectural requirements of this society? Spacious, richly-decorated apartments, in which the court could stand in state while awaiting the passage of the king; in which painting and sculpture should play a secondary, decorative rôle; not the principal, as in the Italian palaces. In an Italian gallery art was the chief occupant: here it was society; there architecture supplied a setting for pictures and statues; here pictures and statues adorned the architecture. French society demanded festal halls and gardens which might serve as open-air drawing-rooms, prolonging the architecture of the noble and stately palaces; gardens embellished with white allegorical statues and colonnades, with trimmed hedges enclosing rooms of living green; gardens furnished here and there with marble stairways, whereon the court could range itself in successive rows; gardens with canals and lakes dotted over with pleasure-galleys bedecked with flags, and with carefully managed perspectives opening in all directions.
Under Louis XVI, it became the fashion to ridicule these geometrical parterres, these trimmed yews, these waters tamed to spout in complicated patterns and figures, this entire absence of all real nature. Ridiculous they were, but were the dairies of the Trianon much less so? It should not be forgotten that the destination of these gardens precluded all pretension to rusticity; that their architecture could serve only as a setting or background for the toilets of ladies in grand state, and the costumes of men who dressed in velvets and satin brocades; surely damp grass, wet ground, bushes and underbrush were out of the question in the circumstances.
At this period the laws of polished society swayed everything, and everything was sacrificed to its behests; most of the old castles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which were mouldering behind their stagnant moats and thick walls, were demolished, to be reconstructed on more ample and more convenient plans. No more of those interior courts, high and narrow, damp and dark; no more halls with bare walls,
1 Madame de Lafayette has admirably depicted this in her history of the
Princess.
During the modern period, on the contrary, we find an Italian art, a Spanish, French, Flemish, English and German art, each sharply defined. Interchanging and interpenetration of forms, of course, occur on all sides, hut at the same time there are very pronounced differences which never lessen in the least. Every national art preserves a physiognomy which continues to be characteristic of it, and yet it appropriates elements from without, transforming them to suit itself; France came under Italian influence, and later borrowed from the Hispano-Flemish school; but, on the other hand, the French school has made its way into foreign lands. Hence come the continual modifications which, though marked and fertile, do not make it possible for one modern style to be confounded with any other.
The admirable suppleness of modern art has enabled architecture to adapt itself to all the variations in manners, of every people and every generation, and to translate them with marvellous accuracy.
The small mediæval Italian republics, hardly out of their perpetual conflicts, which were all the more bitter because the opponents in every case were near relatives, became aristocratic, but they were still divided and powerless: a brilliant court existed at Rome, the centre of wealth and home of the arts, but it was stripped of all military and territorial powers, and woman was excluded from it; in Spain, the vastness of the governmental possessions concealed the precarious character of the monarchical authority, which was, in fact, firmly established nowhere except in the two Castiles; the other provinces considered themselves as almost independent and were restive under the Castilian yoke; the sombre Spanish genius prescribed the most gloomy existence ever known in a European court.
In Germany, that individual spirit was maintained which had so long kept life in the free cities and independent electorates; these were but poorly held together by the imperial bond; while in Austria the struggle between the various nationalities — Germanic, Slavic and Hungarian — and the incessant warfare against the Turk had so far prevented the formation of a brilliant and polished court; the prestige of the imperial sceptre was little more than a vain show, with no strongly established authority behind it. Each of these peoples had its Renaissance architecture, which reflected its social condition. Italy had her palaces, which were mainly colossal galleries for the display of paintings and sculptures; Germany and Flanders had their communal buildings, as Spain her Escurial.
Monarchical France followed quite a different line. With the reign of the Valois monarchs, unification was foreshadowed in the centralization of power; the idea of the fatherland had sprung up. It must not, however, be supposed that it was very deeply rooted as yet; the provinces, it is true, were united, but they were not welded together; the aristocracy still remembered the feudal independence; their antecedents made it impossible for them to comprehend fully the existence of a common interest, superior to their private interests. After the long and violent crisis of the League came the last feeble convulsion of the Fronde, in which the aid of Spain was sought, now by the parliamentary and popular party of the Fronde, now — with far fewer scruples — by the aristocratic party of the Princes; in which we see Turenne, Condé and many others serving, sometimes the Crown, sometimes the insurgents, sometimes the foreigner. It was only under Louis XIV that the task was accomplished and that the idea of duty became absolute; from that moment, these same men are seen turning with horror from the very suggestion of treason to the country, that is to the king, for the king was but the incarnation of the idea of the Fatherland. We have since formed a wholly impersonal notion of the State, and we shrug our shoulders when reminded of Louis XIV’s “ L’état, c’est moi. ” But this shows our lack of comprehension of the ideas of days not our own. This saying of Louis XIV merely puts into words the universal feeling of the time, and the men of the seventeenth century would not have understood any other. Therefore, after 1710, notwithstanding reverses, notwithstanding the mistakes committed, notwithstanding the prevailing misery, no one flinched before the threatened invasion of combined Europe; all France rallied close about the old king, overwhelmed by public calamity
as by domestic sorrows, standing alone among the tombs of his sons and grandsons; from the far away provinces the people watched with respect, as the symbol of the nation exhausted but still determined to battle, the septuagenarian monarch burdened with maladies and almost in the death throes, but erect, gathering his failing forces to face the enemy, and eager to take his place at the head of his last army.
Society formed under the influence of this strongly centralized royalty had its vices; they are known to all. It was, nevertheless, an object of admiration to all Europe, and France long owed to it her prestige. It was preeminently military, and at the same time most refined. The aristocracy had been definitely subdued, and now looked to the king alone for official positions, honor and fortune, all of which were to be obtained by army service; every spring they left Versailles, the city and the chateaux to take commands in the army for a campaign. A few sieges were attempted, a few battles were fought, under orders of the princes of the blood; in the autumn, when the troops were settled in winter quarters, they returned to the court to receive their rewards and resume a life of pleasure. They played the part of courtier, they carried on intrigues with perfect grace, though often touched with perfidy; they joined the king in his repasts and his sports, they attended the fetes, masked-balls, carnivals, p lays and ballets; in the intervals they frequented the by-streets, where wit had its abode. Over these pleasures of a leisure hour woman presided as queen; nobility, refinement and gallantry reigned in the art of speech, qualities demanded at the court of the queen-mother, and which were also developed under the influence of the Princess Henrietta of England, 1 and, later, of the great favorites. To this court of Versailles, the head of a vast country, which was already well ordered, and was organized as no other European State had yet been, flocked the most illustrious army leaders and their officers, prelates, princes of the blood, ministers, important government officials and ambassadors of all the powers, who bestowed upon it a splendor that has never been equalled. The city imitated the court; in the provinces, the governors or their lieutenants officially opened the estates, received, kept open table and gave fetes during their tenure of office, thus reproducing in the most remote parts of the kingdom a picture of that Versailles on which the eyes of France and Europe were fixed. From the highest to the lowest, in the most distant castle, this sumptuous, polished and refined life was copied.
What were the architectural requirements of this society? Spacious, richly-decorated apartments, in which the court could stand in state while awaiting the passage of the king; in which painting and sculpture should play a secondary, decorative rôle; not the principal, as in the Italian palaces. In an Italian gallery art was the chief occupant: here it was society; there architecture supplied a setting for pictures and statues; here pictures and statues adorned the architecture. French society demanded festal halls and gardens which might serve as open-air drawing-rooms, prolonging the architecture of the noble and stately palaces; gardens embellished with white allegorical statues and colonnades, with trimmed hedges enclosing rooms of living green; gardens furnished here and there with marble stairways, whereon the court could range itself in successive rows; gardens with canals and lakes dotted over with pleasure-galleys bedecked with flags, and with carefully managed perspectives opening in all directions.
Under Louis XVI, it became the fashion to ridicule these geometrical parterres, these trimmed yews, these waters tamed to spout in complicated patterns and figures, this entire absence of all real nature. Ridiculous they were, but were the dairies of the Trianon much less so? It should not be forgotten that the destination of these gardens precluded all pretension to rusticity; that their architecture could serve only as a setting or background for the toilets of ladies in grand state, and the costumes of men who dressed in velvets and satin brocades; surely damp grass, wet ground, bushes and underbrush were out of the question in the circumstances.
At this period the laws of polished society swayed everything, and everything was sacrificed to its behests; most of the old castles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which were mouldering behind their stagnant moats and thick walls, were demolished, to be reconstructed on more ample and more convenient plans. No more of those interior courts, high and narrow, damp and dark; no more halls with bare walls,
1 Madame de Lafayette has admirably depicted this in her history of the
Princess.