THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 



257 



250. Eu : COLLEGE CHAPEL. WEST END. 



throughout is contem- 

 porary classic, the plan 

 and structural system 

 remain mediaeval (Figs. 

 249 and 250). 



An illustration of 

 the economical methods 

 of this period is found 

 in the employment of 

 wood instead of stone 

 for the ceiling of earlier 

 churches then under- 

 going completion. For 

 instance, the choir at 

 Brienon, 1'Archeveque, 

 has a flat panelled ceil- 

 ing carried on caryatids 

 in the angles of the apse, 

 while St Pantaleon, 

 Troyes, and St Aignan, 

 Chartres, have wood 

 vaults. 



CLASSICAL AND 

 JESUIT INFLUENCE. Soon, however, the general tendencies of the 

 century asserted themselves, and church-building settled down on classic 

 lines. Yet great as are its achievements, it is impossible not to feel 

 that France never obtained in this domain all that the Renaissance 

 promised. This is the outcome of circumstances by which her archi- 

 tects were dominated. The advanced Renaissance of the sixteenth 

 century had been debarred from producing church architecture on an 

 extensive scale, and there scarcely existed a native tradition to follow. 

 On the other hand, when models were sought in Italy, the interest 

 of Catholics of the counter-Reformation centred on the post-Triden- 

 tine churches, and more particularly, owing to the wide influence of 

 the Jesuits, on the Gesii, their metropolitan church in Rome. 

 Thus Vignola, as represented by this not very interesting work, 

 with a faade modified for the worse by Giacomo della Porta, was 

 much more widely followed than any other architect of the whole 

 Italian Renaissance. When, therefore, one considers on the one hand 

 the limitation in quality and range of their sources of inspiration, and 

 on the other the somewhat heavy and uninspired character of con- 

 temporary national architecture, the excellence of the work of church 

 architects is more surprising than its shortcomings, of which a 

 uniformity, even greater than that of secular work, is the most striking. 

 18 



