discipline of the Renaissance school relaxed with the increase in the number of architects and the growing differentiation of tastes and talents. One new development is worthy of attention, for at a time when the Renaissance style was disintegrating, it added an important and interesting page to the history of Czech architecture. Antonín Wiehl, in the Communal Savings Bank at Prague, had already given proof of his talent and his erudition; but he had subsequently become convinced that the international Renaissance style, based on the Italian schools, might be replaced either by a style derived from the old buildings of Renaissance style in Bohemia, or by an adaptation of the old Renaissance forms surviving in the popular art of the Czechoslovak peasant. Wiehl accordingly studied Czech architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the period when local tradition had blended with inspiration drawn from Northern Italy, and of which abundant examples are still to be found in the little towns of Bohemia, especially in the south. He thus proclaimed the “Czech Renaissance,” feeling assured that he had discovered the proper national style, based on the national history: and he used it for a whole series of constructions, above all for rows of houses with a combined frontage, a type formerly much in favour in Bohemia. This experiment did not fail to bring with it a real advance in the conception of urban architecture, leading as it did to the adoption of simpler methods to façades stripped of luxuriant decoration, to the abandonment of all pretexts for a sham monumental style, of all pompousness. Doors and windows henceforth received plain, energetic frames, walls remained flat without any superfluous jointing, cornices were made prominent, and on the roofs there appeared little gables, attics adorned with turrets, pyramids and vases. Sgraffiti by Ženíšek and mural paintings by Aleš give the finishing touch to the attractive aspect of the streets which the Czech “Renaissance”
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