Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/140

XVI. — Architecture in the Nineteenth Century. The researches made in Greece in the eighteenth cen- tury, and the accurate representations produced of the monuments discovered in that country, were of vital im- portance to architecture, and coDstituted an event in its history. Hitherto the Roman form of the antique style had alone been known and imitated : but at the beginning of the present century an attempt was made in England, Germany, Italy, and France to revive Greek architecture. Nowhere was this movement more strongly developed than in Great Britain ; but, as a separate chapter is devoted to a complete view of our own architecture, in which the Greek phase will receive notice, we pass at once to France and Germany, the two continental countries where Greek art was most studied and followed by architects. In Germany, Schinkel (1781 — 1841), a man of powerful and original genius, was one of the first architects to grasp the new ideas and embody them in forms of beauty borrowed from the Greeks, but with a vital character of their own. His principal works are the Royal Guard- house, the new theatre, the artillery and engineers' school, and the building school at Berlin, the casino at Potsdam, etc. He also designed many churches, castles, and country houses. All his productions are remarkable for unity of design and vigour and harmony of detail.