A consummate mastery in handling Renaissance forms, together with a judicious sense of the architectural or decorative functions of this or that element in the building, is also shown by another architect of the same generation, a friend and collaborator of Ullmann’s, Antonin Barvitius. After the same preliminary training in Vienna, he spent some time in Italy, and there acquired a greater variety and delicacy of expression. An admirable draughtsman, with leanings towards artistic refinements, he wielded the Renaissance style with more subtlety than his friend. Ullmann adored the full-blown Renaissance: his particular idol was Sansovino, from whom he derived his love of ornate expressive forms, of large projections, of rich entablature, of powerful round columns, the Attic, the balustrade and so forth. Barvitius, on the other hand, loved the early Renaissance, as had already been proved by his restoration of the Palazzo di Venezia in Rome: he was all for the restrained and rather severe elegance of the Florentines, with their simplicity of surface and pure rhythm of form. He preferred flat walls and intersections, cornices in slight relief and slender pillars, and for his decorative features he chose those introduced by Brunelleschi and his school. As his art made no attempt to satisfy the contemporary clamour for grandiose buildings, his best work was of a type entirely different from Ullmann’s. While the latter excelled in urban constructions, admirably co-ordinated with the general plan of the street, Barvitius devoted himself mainly to pretty rural villas, never out of harmony with their surroundings. The best of these is the Grœbe villa on the hilltop that overlooks the Nusle Valley at Prague. With Schulz and the sculptor Schnirch as his co-adjutors, he here seems to transport us to Italy, in that Italian garden he has laid out round the villa, with its terraces, zig-zag paths, grottos, fountains, and vines planted on the slope. Barvitius’ activities were also directed to the applied arts, and he
