CHAPTER VII

Britain and France from the 16th to
the i8th Century
AT THE time of Bruchsal and the Trasparente, large houses of
Palladian or Neo-Ckssical style appeared all over England,
houses such as Prior Park, near Bath, Holkham Hall, Stowe
and Kenwood. In France meanwhile the classic grandeur of Ver-
sailles had given way to the Neo-Classical delicacy of the Pkce de la
Concorde and the Petit Trianon. Evidently the development of
architecture after the end of the Gothic syle had been very different
in Western Europe from that in Central Europe.
Yet in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany, the
position had been virtually the same early in the i6th century. In all
these countries artists almost at the same moment turned their backs
on their Gothic past,^ attracted by the same new style, the Italian
Renaissance. Everywhere during the I5th century, the fascination
of Humanism, of Roman literature and the clarity and suppleness
of the classic Latin style had been experienced by scholars. The
invention of printing helped to spread the new ideals, and many
patrons arose among princes, noblemen and merchants. A few of
these, when for some reason or other they found themselves in
Italy, were converted to Italian art as well, as soon as they had under-
stood its humanistic character. How forceful the sensation must
have been it is hardly possible for us to appreciate. One keeps for-
getting that it was still a time of scanty and slow communications.
Perpendicular to the English, Flamboyant to the French and their
national versions of Late Gothic to the Spaniards and Germans were
the only architecture they knew. Now all of a sudden, when Charles
VIII of France set out on his campaign against Italy in 1494, marched
right across the country and captured Naples, or when Durer, the
greatest of German painters, went to Venice in the same year as a
young man of twenty-three, they were faced with a style that made
all they had known appear confused, crabbed and petty. At the same
time, however, these airy, spacious halls, these bold square palaces,
these columns, balusters and round-headed arches, these garlands and
147