A Growing Sense of Structure

For more than four decades, northern enthusiasts of the Italian style happily troweled it on as pure decoration. But gradually they came to learn, chiefly from the skilled architects of Rome, the underlying structural principles that went back to the classic architecture of the Romans and the Greeks. In expressing these principles, they produced stronger, more graceful Renaissance buildings, whose every detail was fused into a harmonious whole. For example, logical systems of columns—no longer merely decorative—supported or seemed to support the heavy friezes and pediments. In such structures, the northern Renaissance style finally came of age.

A FUNCTIONAL THEME-(tie use of paired columns to support an arched opening—is seen here in Renaissance structures built in three countries in the late 16th Century. The remains of a French building at Aigues-Mortes (left) include a triumphal arch reminiscent of its ancient Roman models. The same motif, extended and repeated vertically, looms over Antwerp's town hall (above) and appears over the entrance to England's Burghley House (right).

A Flowering of Native Style

North of Paris, between a wide moat and a spired chapel, stands a building that suggests the final triumph of Italian Renaissance architecture—its development into various national styles. The Petit Chateau of Chantilly was built for the

Montmorency family around 1560. By then France and other countries no longer had to rely solely on Italian architects. Chantilly's designer, Jean Bullant, was both a Frenchman and a trained professional, and he gave ample evidence of his skill and taste in the chateau’s elegant proportions and subdued decoration. He also added themes of northern origin, such as the dormer windows rising in a rhythmic row along the roof. The final product was distinctively, and picturesquely, French.