[Illustration: ELEVATION AND PLAN OF THE UNCOMPLETED PALACE IN CLASSICAL STYLE, OF CHARLES V IN THE ALHAMBRA GROUNDS. P. 402] [Illustration: COURT OF THE COLLEGE OF ALCALA DE HEÑARES BY ALONZO DE COVARRUBIAS. P. 400] [Illustration: THE ESCORIÁL A PALACE, MONASTERY AND MAUSOLEUM. P. 403] [Illustration: PLAN OF THE ESCORIÁL IMITATING THE GRIDIRON ON WHICH S. LAWRENCE WAS MARTYRED. P. 403] CHAPTER V RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, THE NETHERLANDS, AND SPAIN Notwithstanding the close commercial relations that cities such as Augsburg and Nüremburg maintained with Northern Italy, especially with Venice, the Renaissance influences did not make much impression on German architecture until about the middle of the sixteenth century. It had, however, appeared in the paintings and engravings of Dürer and Burkmair and in the sculpture of Peter Vischer--as in his =Tomb of S. Sebald= in =Nüremburg=. But even in architecture there had been symptoms of the spread of Italian taste, Italian architects being employed on castle-building, as in the case already mentioned, of the Venetian, Scamozzi, in Prague. These, however, were only sporadic instances; for two reasons conspired to defer a general movement: the deep-rooted Gothic feeling and the political conditions. Architecture depends largely upon conditions of social stability, making for wealth and ease, and these had been disturbed by Charles V’s long struggle to crush the nobility that upheld the Protestant faith. It was, therefore, not until security had been established by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, that a widespread activity of architecture was resumed. It lasted until the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618. This covers the period of the Early and Later German Renaissance; the remainder of the seventeenth century being marked by a gradual decline into the extravagance of Rococo. =Characteristics.=--Moreover, the German architects, after borrowing the Gothic style, had so fitted it, especially in the way of decorative details, to their own taste, that when at length they borrowed from the Renaissance, they preserved, except in rare instances, much of the Gothic feeling. The new style was employed chiefly in castles, domestic buildings, city halls, gild and corporation houses. In these the German love of irregularity, profusion, fantasticalness, and general picturesqueness still prevailed. It was displayed in the continued partiality for towers and turrets (octagonal, not circular, as in France), often containing spiral staircases; high-pitched roofs and decorated gables, carried up in steps; dormer windows, prolonged through several stories up to the height of the roof and emulating the effect of gables; oriel windows, curved or polygonal, projecting from the face of the façade or from the angles upon corbel-supports.