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. 206.—DOORWAY, ÉCOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, 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. 207.—ST. ISAAC’S CATHEDRAL, ST. PETERSBURG.
In Russia, during and after the reign of Peter the Great (1689–1725), 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.