HOLLAND, FRANCE AND ENGLAND
high pitch characteristic of the French i6th and early I7th centuries,
but slender Ionic pilasters appear in one giant order for both stories*
Giant orders were nothing new. We have found them in Inigo
Jones and before. Palladio had had them and Prance herself
occasionally too (Bullant at Ecouen, Ducerceau at Charleval,
etc.). But in this particularly light and elegant manner they are
curiously similar to those which since about 1630 Holland had
favoured.
Holland just at that time attained the leadership of Western com-
merce, and she was much envied and imitated by both Colbert and
the English. She also led in science and could boast more men of
artistic genius than at any other period in her national existence. In
architecture her development had led her from a gay and jolly style
of 1600, parallel to Henri IV's style and the Jacobean, to a new
classicism, parallel to Mansart's in France and Inigo Jones's in
England. TheMauritshuis at The Hague, built by Jacob van Campen
in 1633—35 (pi. LXXXV), has a correct pediment on correct giant
pilasters, and giant pilasters also along its sides. In this it may well
have influenced France and Vaux in particular, but its intimate size
for a princely residence, its unpretentious plain brick walls and its
all-pervading feeling of solid comfort are very Dutch and quite
different from anything French of that period.
England, on the other hand, could sympathise with .these North-
Western qualities of the Dutch. And her architecture since 1660 was
indeed greatly influenced by the buildings of van Campen and
Vingboons, and by Vingboons's engraved publications of 1648,
1674 and 1688. However, architects, amateurs and scholars, and
especially the Stuart court, were not blind either to the glamour
and the real achievements of the Paris of Colbert and Louis XIV.
There was trading success on the one hand, the grandeur of absolute
monarchy on the other. Hence representational architecture tended
towards the Parisian, domestic architecture towards the Dutch. In
Sir Christopher Wren's work inspiration from both sources can be
traced. He must have studied engravings of Dutch architecture with
great care, and he went to Paris personally, when he had realised
that the designing and supervising of buildings was to be his main
job in life. For Wren (1632-1723)—this is again characteristic of
Renaissance and Baroque—had not been trained as an architect or a
mason. Nor was he a painter or sculptor or engineer. He represents
yet another type, a type not so far met in this book.
165