INTRODUCTION. XXV 



coalition with the strict classic school under Louis XIV., but keeping 

 in touch with Italian Barocco, it re-emerged in his later years, gaining 

 refinement under the Regency and culminating in the finished, though 

 seemingly lawless, elegance of the Louis XV. Style. 



Thus though Gothic detail was eliminated in secular work as early 

 as about 1540, the native, free, naturalistic spirit, which it represented, 

 remained potent in design by coalescing with the free classic tendency 

 of Italy. In church architecture Gothic design and even Gothic detail 

 survived as late as the seventeenth century, while indirect Gothic 

 influence is traceable even in the eighteenth. 



On the other hand, the pure classic school, after falling somewhat 

 into abeyance in the later sixteenth century, revived in the seventeenth, 

 when the direct study of ancient Roman art lent its aid towards the 

 formation of an academic classicism under Richelieu and Mazarin, 

 followed by a series of compromises with Barocco and Rococo. In the 

 eighteenth there came a puristic reaction from the excesses of the 

 latter, simultaneous with that in Italy, and the utilisation of material, 

 newly become available from Roman and Greek art, brought into 

 being the styles of Louis XVI. and the Empire. 



In this long architectural evolution, which resulted from the 

 continued fusion of French and Italian, Gothic and Classic ideas, the 

 parts played by each side are equally important, if not equally obvious. 

 They may be compared to the stock and the graft. The native 

 element supplies the sap, the life, without which the graft must perish. 

 But it is by virtue of the graft, an importation from outside, yet 

 remotely of its own kin, that the tree is saved from running to waste, 

 and enabled to bear a 'crop of fragrant blossom and mellow fruit. 

 Though the detail and typical features of the native element soon 

 disappeared, yet the principle, which underlay them, remained. It 

 survived in many characteristic arrangements, in the insistence on 

 verticality, in endeavours to express actual construction and plan in the 

 architectural treatment, and in the consequent soaring and picturesque 

 effects The imported element brought with it the love of the 

 horizontal line, the idealism which does not scruple to imitate or retain, 

 for their intrinsic beauty, forms once originated by structural needs, 

 but afterwards elaborated into objects of admiration for their own sake. 

 Holding that utilitarian considerations of plan and construction are 

 necessities to be subordinated to the beauty of the total design, it 

 strove after regularity, symmetry, and repose. While the former, with 

 its absorption in technique, favoured needless elaboration for the 

 purpose of exhibiting clever solutions of self-set problems, the latter 

 was inclined to the other extreme of sham construction and dull 

 uniformity. 



The two elements correspond to opposite, but complementary, sides 



