chelieu on the site of the great minister's
native village by Lemercier, the Chateau of Ballery in Normandy, the
additions to the castle of Blois, the Chateau des Maisons near, and the
Church of Val de Grace in Paris, all by Francois Mansard, whose name is
associated with a picturesque form of roof invented by him.

In the chateau of Versailles, designed by Jules Mansard, a distant
connection of the greater Francois, the first note of the decadence of
the Renaissance style was sounded, for well-built and richly decorated
though it is, the huge structure is lacking in the dignified grandeur,
so distinctive of the buildings enumerated above.

Although it was in Italy and France that European Renaissance
architecture achieved its greatest triumphs, some few fine examples of
it remain in other countries, including in Spain the great Monastery and
Palace of the Escurial near Madrid, the central church of which is
especially fine, the Cathedrals of Burgos, Malaga, and Granada, the town
halls of Saragossa and Seville, and portions of the Alcazar of Toledo,
the convent of Mafra in Portugal, the Town Hall of Antwerp, the Council
Halls of Leipzig and Rothenburg, the Cloth Hall of Brunswick, the Castle
of Schallenburg, and the Hall of the Belvedere at Prague.

It is unnecessary to refer in detail to the many buildings in Europe in
what is known as the Rococo style, of which grotesque and meaningless
ornamentation is the chief characteristic, but it must be added that in
the early 19th century something like a new classic revival took place
on the Continent. The Church of La Madeleine and the Opera House in
Paris, the Arco della Pace at Milan, the Royal Theatre at Berlin, the
Glyptothex and Pinacothex of Munich, the Walhalla at Ratisbon, the
Museum of Dresden, and the Church of S. Isaac at St. Petersburg being
notable instances of the skilful way in which Greek details of structure
were combined by the best architects with modern requirements.

CHAPTER XI

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN

It was only by very slow degrees that the Renaissance style was
introduced into England, native architects and those for whom they
worked having clung with almost pathetic devotion to the traditions of
the past. At the end of the 15th century the Gothic style was still in
full vigour on this side of the Channel, and although early in the 16th
century it was to a great extent modified by the influence of the
foreign artists