"To-day,"
he said, "put in possession of the very principles of Hellenic Art,
we can apply them to all our actual needs,--learning from the Greeks
themselves to preserve our independence, and at the same time to be duly
novel and unrestrained according to circumstances." These are certainly
noble sentiments; and one cannot but wish, that, when, in 1830, Klenze
was called upon to prepare plans for the grand Walhalla of Bavaria, he
had remembered his sublime theory and worked up to its spirit, instead
of recalling the Parthenon in his exterior and the Olympian temple of
Agrigentum in his interior. The last effort of this distinguished artist
was the building of three superb palaces for the museum of the Emperor
at St. Petersburg, finished in 1851.
The seed thus planted fell upon good ground and brought forth a
hundred-fold. Then, throughout Germany, the scholastic formalism of the
old Renaissance began to fall into disrepute, and a finer feeling for
the eloquence of pure lines began to show itself. The strict limitations
of the classic orders were no longer recognized as impassable; a
sentiment of artistic freedom, a consciousness of enlarged resources,
a far wider range of form and expression, were evident in town and
country, in civil and ecclesiastical structures; and with all this
delightful and refreshing liberty was mingled that peculiar refinement
of line which was revived from Greece and was the secret of this change.
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