The architecture of humanism; a study in the history of taste

THE

ROMANTIC FALLACY

49

tothe Renaissante

traditionthisliteraryflavour, in

adoptingthisunprecedentedlyimitativemanner,the

vigourof

theRenaissancestylewasfinallyandfatally

impaired.

• Inobediencetothecultof

'

ideal'severity

itcutdowntoo

/scrupulouslyall

evidenceoflife

;

and

when,with the)passing ofthe old orderofsociety,

vanished also the high level of workpanship and

exquisite ordering of ideaswhich that society had

exacted, then the ruin of the classical style was

consummated, and poverty of execution completed

what poverty of design had begun.} The antique,

which Brunelleschi invoked, wasnow realised with

full self-consciousness;

in

the last stages

of the

Empirestyletheresourcesofclassicarchitectureseem

atlengthtobeexhausted; inthatstylethe

architects

of Napoleon built the monument, and wrote the

epitaph,ofRenaissanceart.

v^Buttheromanticimpulse,whenit hasthusdealt

the death-blow

tothe living Renaissance tradition,

stillhaditscoursetorun.

The

attitude

of

mindof

whichthe Empire stylewastheclassicalexpression

hadyettomanifest

itselfinotherformslessfit. Its

final

and

definitiveachievement was, ofcourse, the

general revival

of Gothic. Towards this end the

literary

andsentimentalcurrents

of

thetime

combined

moreand more

powerfully toimpel it, and as the

nineteenthcentury

progressedandtheoldstandards

became forgotten,

romantic enthusiasm in archi-

D