During the latter part of the seventeenth and the following century Holland architecture emulated the styles of Louis XIV and XV, though without the refinement of the French models.
CHAPTER VI
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND AND AMERICAN COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE
Transition.—The direct effect of the Italian Renaissance did not reach English architecture until the seventeenth century, when Inigo Jones introduced the Palladian style. The so-called “Anglo-Classical” style which then ensued had been preceded by a period of transition from the Gothic, which is usually divided into “Elizabethan” and “Jacobean.” These represent not so much styles as mannerisms. Just as, according to Shakespeare, the Englishman derived the fashion of his clothes from various foreign sources, so, at this time, he decked out what was left of the Gothic style with details borrowed from Italian, French, Netherland, and German models.
The debased form of Gothic, known as Perpendicular, involving the use of the low, four-centered arch, emphasising vertical and horizontal lines, and covering surfaces with mechanically repeated geometrical patterns, lingered on into the sixteenth century. But conditions in England were changing. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), waged by the nobles on one another, had completed the break up of the Feudal System. Castles were destroyed and the powerful families exterminated or represented mainly by minors. Statesmanship passed into the hands of an intellectual middle class whose power was advanced by the growing prosperity of trade and commerce.
WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
By Robert Smithson. Elizabethan Example of Gothic Combined with Renaissance. Note the German Influence in the Strapwork Gables. [P. 412]
