Fine examples of Spanish colonial work exist in Mexico, Peru, and other South American countries where the Baroque was allied, as in Europe, with the Jesuits. Churches are painted and gilded with an exuberance equal to or even greater than that found in the mother country. Sometimes the churches are encrusted with tiles, and they always possess elaborate retablos. Northern Europe
After spreading from Italy to France, Renaissance influence began to filter to Belgium and Holland, later reaching the various Germanic states and finally dying out in Scandinavia and Russia.
In the Low Countries and northern Germany during the 16th-century Renaissance, ornament was adapted to form an entirely individual style, which can be seen in the pattern books of the artists Hans Vredeman de Vries and Wendel Dietterlin. Strapwork (interlacing bands) and raised faceted ornament were widely employed, together with muscular, grotesque masked caryatids and distorted architectural features arranged in undisciplined designs. Chimney pieces, with overmantels carried to the ceiling, were embellished with marble columns and elaborate strapwork patterns, while similar ornaments flanked the doorways and enriched the ceilings. The great tapestries for which the Netherlands had long been famous were still in use, and Oriental carpets were spread as table covers and not used on the floors. Many town houses and civic buildings were comfortably appointed, yet without spectacular extravagances, and give an impression of modest prosperity. In Belgium the Musée Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp (1550), is unusually richly decorated, showing the influence of Spanish rule in the use of embossed leather as a wall covering. Large windows, with rectangular leaded lights, are again typical of a northern climate. Ceilings are beamed or plastered, and floors most frequently are of tiles on the ground floor and timber on upper floors.
The later styles of Baroque and the 18th-century tastes are copied from French models, particularly in Belgium. The Dutch, after achieving independence in the latter part of the 16th century, developed their decoration on more individual lines. Typical domestic interiors on a small scale are familiar through the paintings of the 17th-century artists Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. The fine series of town houses by Daniel Marot and his sons in The Hague illustrate the cross-currents of the various styles; built at the turn of the 17th century, they were conceived in the Louis XIV, or Régence, manner, yet could be set down in 18th-century London without incongruity (and Marot did, in fact, work for a time in England). Fine stuccoed ceilings and overdoors, largely uncoloured, and wrought iron balustrading are characteristic.
In Germany the general trend was similar, but in southern Germany and Austria fresh impetus and individuality were given to Baroque and also Rococo design. French and Italian craftsmen worked throughout the 17th century on the many Catholic churches built in south Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia. The use of colour, fresco, and stucco that they introduced has its own particular flavour when seen in cool northern light.
Secular building from the early 18th century, in the hands of such architects as Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt and Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, makes use of much sculptural detail. Windows are round or oval, figures strain to support capitals, balustrades are carved in sculptural manner, and modelled niches contain larger than life-sized figures; all these give a feeling of movement reminiscent in its impact of Bernini’s work in Rome. Another characteristic was the enormous staircase hall, or Treppenhaus, which was one of the most notable interior features of German and Austrian Baroque and Rococo architecture. In the halls, colour was frequently confined to the painted ceilings, giving increased force to the novel and delicious colours of the rooms beyond. A vermilion dado or olive-green panels may be contrasted with white and gold. In the Nymphenburg Palace, near Munich (1734–39), by the Frenchman François de Cuvilliés, the Rococo reaches its crowning achievement: mirrors are framed in freely scrolled moldings, which in their turn are interspersed with trellising, garlands, baskets of fruit and flowers, cupids, birds, and fountains in silvered stucco on a pale blue or yellow ground, the whole evoking the essence of pastoral Romanticism.
Mingled influences from France, Holland, and England reached Sweden and Denmark in the mid-17th century and are seen in the Baroque and Louis XIV interiors of the Riddarhuset and Royal Palace in Stockholm and in the chinoiserie (Chinese-influenced decoration) of the Royal Palace of Drottningholm. Scandinavian interiors, however, largely continued to be of the traditional exposed timber boarding, hung perhaps with painted linen panels and brightened by woven chair and cushion coverings.
Russia imported foreign designers and styles in the late 17th and 18th centuries for the palaces built under the westernizing influence of Peter I the Great, his daughter Elizabeth, and Catherine II the Great. In the mid-18th century the Italian Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli designed the Tsarskoye (Detskoye) Selo (now called Pushkin), Peterhof, and Winter palaces in or near St. Petersburg, and A.B. Kvasov, S.I. Chevakinsky, and Rastrelli designed the Hermitage, also in St. Petersburg. Each worked largely according to his own current national styles. The same is true of the work of the British architect Charles Cameron at Tsarskoye Selo Palace and Pavlovsk Palace.
In many areas of Europe, Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo had little effect on interior decoration. In the Alpine lands, where wood was cheap and plentiful, traditional medieval methods continued for a long time. Wooden floors and ceilings and panelled walls, or partly panelled with plain plaster above, were the general rule. The moldings were bold, but carving was usually in low relief and often the woodwork was painted in bright colours. England
The breakup of the feudal system during the Wars of the Roses and under Henry VII in the late 15th century had far-reaching effects on the social structure of the time and consequently on domestic buildings and their decoration. The new conditions necessitated a larger number of rooms, and a great hall, though still an important apartment, was no longer the focus of indoor life. Wider distribution of wealth gave rise to numerous country houses, and for the next 400 years the English excelled in their building and decoration.
The Italian style reached England in the early 16th century; the earliest example is the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey, designed by Pietro Torrigiani of Florence at the command of Henry VIII and completed in 1518. For the next 40 years or so, English craftsmen borrowed from the repertoire of Italian ornament, at first inspired by and imitating the Italian artists and craftsmen employed on royal works at Hampton Court Palace, Middlesex, and the Palace of Westminster, London, who used arabesque decoration, medallion heads, and amorini on panelling and plasterwork, often mingling them with the traditional Gothic motifs. The great hall at Hampton Court (1515–30) shows a combination of Renaissance carved and gilded detail with the traditional type of open timber roof, known as the hammerbeam roof, and windows divided into sections by vertical posts (mullions). In spite of Henry VIII’s example, however, the Gothic style died hard in England, lingering in the remoter districts well into the 17th century.
During the second half of the 16th century, as a result of the break with Rome, the Italian style was largely replaced by the distinctive Renaissance style of the Low Countries and Germany, fostered by the close religious, political, and economic relations between England and the Low Countries, the influx of immigrant workmen, and the circulation of Flemish and German pattern books. This new manner became the dominant influence in the decoration of panelling and plasterwork, characteristic features being intrinsic strapwork patterns, pyramid finials (sculptured ornaments used to terminate roof gables), raised faceted ornament, masks and caryatid figures, scrolls, and pilasters. Both the Italian and Flemish styles were adapted and naturalized to some extent by the English craftsmen, producing a new style that is peculiarly English.