Fig. 435.—Carved Panel, Henry II. style, from the Château d’Anet.
Fig. 436.—Carved Wood; Château Gaillon. (1505.)
The above examples, and the chimney-piece panel by Germain Pilon (1560) (Fig. 437), another sculptor employed by Catherine de’ Medici, are a few of the best specimens of the Cinquecento period in France.
Elizabethan ornament, or that of the Renaissance in England, is characterized by a preponderance of strap-work, and has animals, masks, rosettes, half-lion or half-human terminals, debased class of mouldings, and very little foliage. The example given—the panelling from the Old Guard Chamber, Westminster (1600), exhibits a strong influence of Saracenic tracery that was prevalent in much of the later furniture and textiles of the Renaissance (Fig. 438).
Fig. 437.—Panel from Chimneypiece; Louvre. By Germain Pilon.
Fig. 438.—Elizabethan Panelling, from the Old Guard Chamber, Westminster.
Shield-work was not so prominent in the pure Elizabethan as in the Jacobean (James I.) style; the carved stone escutcheon-like work from Crewe Hall, Cheshire, attributed to Inigo Jones (Fig. 439), shows the beginning of the Jacobean shield-work. This style is best seen in the carved-wood furniture of the period, and both it and the Elizabethan are generally speaking offshoots of the Flemish and German phases of the Renaissance. Elizabethan ornament is of great variety, the panelling and other arrangements are sometimes composed purely of strap-work of a rectangular flat perforated appearance, sometimes seen in the doorways and chimney fronts, as at Hardwick Hall, Haddon Hall, Speke and Crewe Halls. Another kind is of a more curved variety, with figures and animals, as seen in the illustration from an old house at Exeter now in Kensington Museum (Fig. 440); another kind is carved in rectangular or curved and notched frames of cartouche work with the smaller spaces and little panels carved in imitation of jewels with oval or lozenge-shaped facets. Columns of Ionic or Corinthian orders, and classic mouldings, dentils, and the egg and tongue were frequently used. The ceilings were often panelled and moulded, inclining in this respect more to the Gothic than classic. A bizarre kind of Renaissance architectural feature was prevalent in Holland and in some parts of Germany, which seems to have been the model for much of the “bolt and lock” style of some Elizabethan gateways. The architect Dietterlin, of Strassburg (1550-1599), was an extraordinary exponent of this twisted and bolted form of fantastic architecture, which had become only too fashionable at this period. The illustration (Fig. 441) shows an example of what might be called a mild specimen of the style of Dietterlin. The popularity of the Dietterlin craze was owing to the circulation of several volumes he had published of his impossible designs, some of which designs were evidently adapted by the Elizabethan architects, but in a much more reticent spirit.