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LEIDEN, RHIJNLAND (DATED 1612)

With the advancing seventeenth century came a keener desire for the employment of purer forms of Renaissance art. Architects turned their thoughts to the Italian ideal, which they modified, yet preserved in its essential characteristics. Chief among the exponents of the developed style were Jacob van Campen and Phillippus Vinckboons, both of Amsterdam; and Pieter Post of Haarlem. The massive Town Hall of Amsterdam—now the Royal Palace—by van Campen, is one of the most important buildings of this period. It was erected between the years 1648 and 1655. But the severe classic ideas, directing towards uniformity and symmetrical arrangements, were never really at home, nor did they displace the weakening influence of inherited tradition. In the general mass of work the Dutch national genius continued to assert itself. Up to the time when the native architecture became devoid of character and personality, the houses and trade buildings in which the people lived and worked—even if of strange appearance or sometimes fantastic beyond description—retained an unmistakable flavour of the vernacular and owned something of that playfulness and quaint invention that were the heritage of mediæval times.