The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The seed thus planted fell upon good ground and brought forth a
hundred-fold. Then, throughout Germany, the scholastic formalism of the
old Renaissance began to fall into disrepute, and a finer feeling for
the eloquence of pure lines began to show itself. The strict limitations
of the classic orders were no longer recognized as impassable; a
sentiment of artistic freedom, a consciousness of enlarged resources,
a far wider range of form and expression, were evident in town and
country, in civil and ecclesiastical structures; and with all this
delightful and refreshing liberty was mingled that peculiar refinement
of line which was revived from Greece and was the secret of this change.
It was not over monumental edifices alone that this calm and thoughtful
spirit was breathed, but the most playful fancies of domestic
architecture derived from it an increased grace and purity, and the
study of Love moved over them, elegant and light-footed as Camilla.
"The flower she touched on dipped and rose,
And turned to look at her."
This revival of Hellenic principles is now infusing life into modern
German designs; and so well are these principles beginning to be
understood, that architects do not content themselves with the mere
reproduction of that narrow range of motives which was uttered in the
temples of heroic Greece, but, under these new impulses, they gather in
for their use all that has been done in ancient or modern Italy, in the
Romanesque of Europe, in the Gothic period, in Saracenic or Arabic Art,
in all the expressions of the old Renaissance. By the very necessity
of the Greek line, they are rendered catholic and unexcluding in their
choice of forms, but fastidious and hesitating in their interpretation
of them into this new language of Art. Thus the good work is going on in
Germany, and architecture _lives_ there, thanks to those two illustrious
pilgrims who brought back from the land of epics, not only the
scallop-shells upon their shoulders, but in their hearts the
consecration of Ideal Beauty.
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