Elizabethan Style

Elizabethan Style, in English art, a period between the Gothic and Renaissance styles. It reached its apogee in the late 1500s, toward the end of the long reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and is often considered the last phase of the long-lasting Tudor style. Although the Elizabethan age produced a certain amount of characteristic sculpture (particularly tomb sculpture) and painting (such as Nicholas Hilliard's miniature portraits), the Elizabethan style can best be seen in the period's architecture—the great country houses of the new nobility. Elizabethan style was eclectic, borrowing decorative motifs from Continental Gothic, Italian, and Flemish design; exteriors and interiors were elaborately ornamented with relief work, mullions, ornate chimneys, and friezes. The main impulse of Elizabethan architecture was toward a well-ordered symmetry; Elizabethan symmetrical facades, often filled with huge windows, were different from those of the heavy castlelike Gothic and early Tudor country residences. A typical building of the period is Wollaton Hall (1588), Nottinghamshire, built by Robert Smythson; it was the first English house to abandon the traditional central courtyard and to place in its stead a high-ceilinged great hall lighted by gallery windows and surrounded by classically proportioned, multiwindowed wings.

See also Gothic Art and Architecture; Renaissance Art and Architecture.