Inigo Jones

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The English architect and designer Inigo Jones (1573-1652) was the most talented native artist in England in the first half of the 17th century. He was responsible for introducing Italian Renaissance architecture into England.

Inigo Jones was born in London on July 15, 1573. Little is known of his early life and education, but between 1596/1597 and 1605 he traveled on the Continent and spent some years in Italy. In and around Venice and Vicenza he observed the buildings of Andrea Palladio, one of the major architects of the Late Renaissance, whose theories and designs had a profound effect on him.

During this period Jones may have worked for a time for King Christian of Denmark. In 1609 Jones traveled in France, and in 1613-1614 he toured the Continent, spending most of the time in Italy. During this Italian sojourn Jones undertook a professional study of Palladio's architecture and architectural theories.

In 1615 James I appointed Jones surveyor of the King's works, an important position, which was essentially that of chief architect to the Crown. He also held this position under Charles I until 1642, when the outbreak of the civil war disrupted court life.

Court Masques

During the reigns of both monarchs Jones designed and produced court masques, elaborate theatrical festivals which were common at courts on the Continent, especially in Italy. Ben Jonson often wrote scripts for the masques, and between 1605 and 1640 Jones worked on at least 25 of these productions. James l's queen, Anne of Denmark, was devoted to lavish entertainment and to the masques, and the tradition was continued in the reign of Charles I.

The masques, in which the sovereigns and courtiers participated, were dazzling spectacles organized around allegorical or mythological themes; they involved music, ballet, and spoken parts and required fantastic costumes, complex stage machinery, and brilliant stage settings. Hundreds of Jones's drawings for the costumes and stage designs are extant, none of which would have been possible without his knowledge of Italian art and draftsmanship. The masques allowed him to exercise an imaginative fantasy which rarely appears in the sobriety of his architectural designs.

His Architecture

Jones was the first professional architect in England in the modern sense of the term, and he turned English architecture from its essentially medieval Gothic and Tudor traditions into the mainstream of the Italian Renaissance manner. He designed many architectural projects, some of them vast in scale; but of the buildings actually executed from his designs only seven remain, most of them in an altered or restored state.

The earliest of Jones's surviving buildings is the Queen's House at Greenwich, a project he undertook for Queen Anne in 1616. The lower floor was completed at the time the Queen died in 1619. Work then stopped but was resumed in 1630 for Queen Henrietta Maria, Charles l's wife, and was completed in 1635. The building is marked by a symmetrical plan, simplicity of classical detail, harmonious proportions, and severe purity of line, all elements that reflected Italian Renaissance sources and constituted an architectural revelation to the English.

The building now most associated with Jones is the Banqueting House at Whitehall (1619-1622). Intended to serve as a setting for state functions, it is a sophisticated manipulation of Italian classical elements and owes much to Palladio. The main facade consists of seven bays and two stories gracefully unified in an elegant, rational pattern of classical columns and pilasters, lightly rusticated stone, discreetly carved ornamentation, and a delicate contrast of textures. The interior is one large double-cube room; its classical severity contrasts dramatically with the richly baroque ceiling containing paintings by Peter Paul Rubens that were installed in 1635.

The Queen's Chapel, Marlborough Gate, completed in 1627, has a coffered barrel vault derived from imperial Roman architecture; it was Jones's first design for a church and the first church structure in England in the classical style. In 1631 he became associated with a city planning project in the Covent Garden district of London and designed St. Paul's Church there. The church, which still exists in a restored condition, is in the form of an austere classical temple with a deep portico and severe Tuscan columns. Between 1634 and 1642 Jones was occupied with extensive restoration of the old St. Paul's Cathedral (now destroyed), which he fronted with a giant classical portico of 10 Corinthian columns. From about 1638 Jones was involved in preparing designs for a vast baroque palace projected by Charles I, but it was not realized.

In 1642 the conflict between Parliament and King erupted in open warfare which swept away the elegant Cavalier court of Charles I, and Jones's world disappeared with it. His last important work was undertaken in 1649, when he and John Webb, who had been his assistant for many years, provided designs for the Double-and Single-Cube Rooms at Wilton House. The architectural decoration of this splendidly proportioned suite of rooms is essentially French in character; the cream-colored walls are decorated with a rich variety of carved and gilded moldings and ornaments to create an effect both opulent and disciplined. Jones died in London on June 21, 1652, the same year that Wilton House was completed.

Further Reading

The most recent work on Jones is Sir John Summerson, Inigo Jones (1966). An older but still useful study is J. Alfred Gotch, Inigo Jones (1928). For an excellent analysis of Jones's place in the history of English architecture see Sir John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (1954; 5th ed. 1969). Margaret Whinney and Oliver Millar, English Art, 1625-1714 (1957), is valuable for placing Jones within the context of 17th-century English art in general. J. Lees-Milne, The Age of Inigo Jones (1953), is a useful examination of the artist against the historical background of his period.

Jones, Inigo (1573-1652). Masque designer, architect, and courtier, Jones's architectural legacy only fructified in the early 18th cent. through the neo-Palladian movement. Yet Jones personally remains frustratingly elusive, for all his arrogance and engrossing power as surveyor of the king's works (1615-44). Apart from entrancing scenic and costume designs, only seven of Jones's 45 architectural works survive: the most notable are the Whitehall Banqueting House, Queen's chapel at St James's, Queen's House at Greenwich, and, by no means least because of its Carolean town-planning context, St Paul's church, Covent Garden.

London-born architect of Welsh origin, he was largely responsible for introducing the Classical Palladian style to Jacobean England, and indeed for begetting the first Palladian Revival. From 1605 to 1640 he staged over 50 masques, plays, etc. (often in collaboration with Ben Jonson (1572–1637) ) for the Courts of Kings James I and VI (1603–25) and Charles I (1625–49), the surviving drawings for which show that he was well acquainted with the most up-to-date Italian designs by 1609. From c.1606 he produced a number of designs for structures in which his partially digested understanding of Classicism taken from sources such as Palladio, Sangallo, and Serlio was apparent. In 1610 he was appointed Surveyor to Henry, Prince of Wales (1593/4–1612), and in 1613 was granted the reversion of the place of Surveyor of the King's Works. He had visited Italy before 1603, but his second trip to that country (1613–14) was important in forming his architectural tastes, for he met Scamozzi and visited a great number of buildings illustrated in Palladio's Quattro Libri. In 1615, armed at last with the necessary architectural expertise, he became Surveyor of the King's Works, and built the Queen's House, Greenwich (1616–35), the Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619–22), and the Queen's Chapel, St James's (1623–5), all of which survive as a testimony of his careful study of the work of the Italian masters and of his own understanding of the principles of Classical design. Nothing resembling them had ever been built in England before, and indeed in a Europe dominated at the time by the Baroque style they had no contemporary exemplars in France or Italy. Although they were not immediately influential, and were perhaps oddities when Jacobean Mannerism was de rigueur, they became exemplars for a type of astylar house that came into favour after 1660, and indeed led to the second Palladian Revival of Campbell, Burlington, and their contemporaries in C18. He also designed the Prince's Lodgings, Newmarket, Cambs. (1619–22—destroyed), which influenced the design of many red-brick houses with stone dressings and hipped roofs throughout the second half of C17.

From 1625 to 1640 Jones worked on the Classicization of the old St Paul's Cathedral, London, clothing the medieval fabric in a new garb, and adding a huge prostyle Corinthian portico, the grandest north of the Alps at that time, which showed Englishmen the power, scale, and possibilities inherent in Roman architecture, and provided an important precedent for Wren when rebuilding the Cathedral after 1666. For Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford (1539–1641), he designed and laid out the Piazza, Covent Garden (1631–7), the first London Square, with unified façades consisting of arcaded ground floors over which was a Giant Order of pilasters, perhaps suggested partly by the piazza and church in Livorno (Leghorn) and partly by the Henri Quatre Place des Vosges, Paris (1605–12). It was an enormously influential development, anticipating much C18 British urban planning and domestic architecture in towns. He designed St Paul's Church, Covent Garden (1631–3), the first complete Classical church in England, with a Tuscan portico taken from Barbaro's version of Vitruvius. His design for a huge new palace at Whitehall (c.1638) reveals that he was not, however, impressive as an architect of large complexes, although his work influenced developments at Whitehall until the end of C17.

Jones seems to have acted as a consultant for the south front of Wilton House, Wilts. (c.1636), designed by Isaac de Caus, but his supposedly prolific activities as a country-house architect (a hare apparently started by Colen Campbell) are now, through modern research, largely exploded as myths. Among works attributed to him were Byfleet House, Surrey (c.1617), Coleshill House, Berkshire (from 1647), Houghton House, Houghton Conquest, Beds. (after 1615), and Stoke Park, Stoke Bruern, Northants. (c.1630), but the documentation is inadequate. He did, however, design a very handsome Classical choir-screen for Winchester Cathedral, Hants. (1637–8), during the episcopacy (1632–45) of Walter Curl (1575–1647), who made it his business to decorate and improve the interior: the screen was dismantled in 1820, but the central part is now in the Museum of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. He was an important influence on his pupil and nephew, John Webb, through whom Jones's collection of drawings were passed down to subsequent generations. Many of the drawings in Burlington's collection were published in Kent's The Designs of Inigo Jones (1727), Ware's Designs of Inigo Jones and Others (1731), and Vardy's Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent (1744). All Jones's known drawings were listed in John Harris's and Gordon Higgott's Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings (1989). See Paesschen.

Bibliography

• Colvin (1995)
• J. Curl (2001)
• E.Harris (ed.) (1990)
• J.Harris &Higgott (1989)
• J.Harris, Orgel, & Strong (1973)
• J.Harris & Tait (1979)
• Leapman(2003)
• Lees-Milne(1953)
• Millar (1987)
• Mowl & Earnshaw(1995)
• Placzek (ed.)(1982)
• Summerson (ed.) (1966, 1993)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652), English architect. Inigo Jones was important for introducing Italian design into a country that was only haphazardly acquainted with the forms of Renaissance architecture. He was also responsible, from 1605 to 1640, for staging over fifty masques and plays for the royal court, often in collaboration with Ben Jonson; many surviving drawings show how well acquainted he was with stage designs from Florence and the Medici court. Jones was born in London, the son of a Welsh clothworker. Nothing is known of his early life but he is first recorded in 1603 as a picture-maker, working for the 5th earl of Rutland, with whom he perhaps went on a diplomatic mission to Denmark. But it was also about this time that he first traveled to Italy, perhaps in the entourage of Frances Manners, the earl's brother.

Jones's first architectural designs date from about 1606 and show that by then he had already acquired a knowledge of the work of architects like Andrea Palladio and Sebastiano Serlio. In 1610 he was appointed surveyor to Henry, Prince of Wales, and it was during this period that he may have worked on some internal alterations at St. James's Palace. In 1612, after the death of the prince, Jones came into contact with the duke of Arundel, an important patron and collector of art, in 1613–1614 accompanying him to Italy, to deepen further his knowledge of architecture. It was on this trip that Jones acquired his first drawings by Palladio. When, in 1615, he was appointed surveyor of the king's works, he was now ready to design works of his own. Through the generous patronage of King James I, he was able to design a small, but important, number of buildings: the Queen's House at Greenwich (1619–1635), the Queen's Chapel at St. James's Palace (1617–1618), and the Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619–1622). Nothing like these buildings, in their strict, spare Italianate forms, had ever been seen in England, and their style was perhaps at first difficult for many to appreciate.

From about 1618 to 1640 Jones was also busy on two other major projects: the repair of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and the square and houses that he built for the Earl of Bedford on property the earl owned at Covent Garden. The work Jones did at St. Paul's Cathedral was destroyed in the fire of 1666, but, especially in its vast Corinthian portico, it represented a new and grander Roman style of architecture, defining church architecture in ways that would be especially important for Christopher Wren when he also worked at St. Paul's and later designed other London churches. At Covent Garden, where Jones designed St. Paul's Church, the first classical church in England, his opportunities were limited. But in the plan, and in the design of the houses around the square, borrowed from what he had seen in Paris and Livorno, Jones defined a pattern of urban architecture that would be used widely in England for the next two centuries.

Jones's grandest project was for a vast palace at Whitehall, modeled on both the Escorial in Spain and the Louvre in Paris. And if nothing came of his plans because of the financial and political difficulties of King Charles I, what Jones suggested, as documented in his preparatory drawings, affected all the later designs done on this important site. Jones was also involved with several projects for country houses, the most important being Wilton House, Wiltshire, where the south front, begun by Isaac de Caux about 1636, was much influenced by his ideas. In a series of designs from this time, none of which were executed, Jones defined a restrained, undecorated style that was used in many of the buildings of this kind designed in England after the Revolution of 1688–1689.

The political misfortunes of Charles I affected Jones very directly; in 1643 he was dismissed as surveyor of the king's works. He received no further commissions after this, but when he died, he was able to leave a considerable sum of money to John Webb, his pupil and assistant, who had married one of his relatives. It was also to Webb that Jones bequeathed his drawings, which were later acquired by Lord Burlington in the 1720s and then used to define the revival of Palladio in England in the eighteenth century. Over forty volumes from Jones's library, many with his annotations, now reside at Worcester College, Oxford, and have been used extensively by scholars; many of his drawings for masques and stage designs passed through Lord Burlington to the dukes of Devonshire and are presently preserved at Chatsworth.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Chaney, Edward. Inigo Jones' Roman Sketchbook. Facsimile of the original manuscript at Chatsworth. Forthcoming.

Harris, John, and Gordon Higgott. Inigo Jones: The Complete Architectural Drawings. New York, 1989.

Peacock, John. The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1995.

Secondary Sources

Summerson, John. Inigo Jones. London, 1966. Reprinted, New Haven and London, 2000.

——. "The Surveyorship of Inigo Jones, 1615–43." In History of the King's Works, edited by H. M. Colvin, vol. 3, pp. 129–160. London, 1975.

—DAVID CAST

Portrait of Inigo Jones painted by William Hogarth in 1758 from a 1636 painting by Sir Anthony van Dyck

Inigo Jones (July 15, 1573 – June 21, 1652) is regarded as the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England. He also made valuable contributions to stage design.

Beyond the fact that he was born in the vicinity of Smithfield in central London, the son of a Welsh Catholic cloth worker,^[1] and christened at the church of St Bartholomew the Less, little is known about Jones' early years. But towards the end of the 16th century, he became one of the first Englishmen to study architecture in Italy, making two visits to that country. The first (c.1598-1603) was possibly funded by Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland. The second, from 1613 to 1614, found Inigo in the company of the Earl of Arundel. He may also have been in Italy in 1606 and was influenced by the ambassador Henry Wotton and owned a copy of Andrea Palladio's works with marginalia that refer to Wotton. See Wotton And His Worlds 2004 by Gerald Curzon. His work became particularly influenced by Palladio. To a lesser extent, he also held that the setting out of buildings should be guided by principles first described by ancient Roman writer Vitruvius.

The Queen's House at Greenwich

Jones' best known buildings are the Queen's House at Greenwich, London (started in 1616, his earliest surviving work) and the Banqueting House at Whitehall (1619) – part of a major modernisation by him of the Palace of Whitehall – which also has a ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens.

The Banqueting House was one of several projects where Jones worked with his personal assistant and nephew by marriage John Webb.

The other project in which Jones was involved was the design of Covent Garden. He was commissioned by the Earl of Bedford to build a residential square along the lines of an Italian piazza. The Earl felt obliged to provide a church and he warned Jones that he wanted to economise. He told him to simply erect a "barn" and Jones' oft-quoted response was that his lordship would have "the finest barn in Europe". Little remains of the original church situated to the west of the piazza.

A masque Costume for a Knight, designed by Inigo Jones.

As well as his architectural work, Jones did a great deal of work in the field of stage design. He is credited with introducing movable scenery and the proscenium arch to English theatre. Jones designed costumes, sets, and stage effects for a number of masques by Ben Jonson, and the two had famous arguments about whether stage design or literature was more important in theatre. (Jonson ridiculed Jones in a series of his works, written over a span of two decades.)^[2]

As the Surveyor of Works to King Charles I, Jones worked for Queen Henrietta Maria on the design of a Roman Catholic chapel at Somerset House (an act that provoked great suspicion from the Protestants) and his career effectively ended with the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 and the seizure of the King's houses in 1643. His property was later returned to him (c.1646) but Jones ended his days living in Somerset House and was subsequently buried in the Church of St Benet Paul's Wharf, in London. John Denham and then Christopher Wren followed him as King's Surveyor of Works.

It was in his capacity as surveyor that he was asked to conduct some measurements of Stonehenge. While some of Jones's observations are questionable, and his interpretations and conclusions can only be regarded as fanciful at best, his was the first serious survey.

He was an influence on a number of 18th century architects, notably Lord Burlington and William Kent.

Contents 1 Legacy 2 Notes 3 References 4 External links

Legacy

There is an Inigo Jones Road in Charlton, south east London (SE7).

Notes

1. ^ His father also bore the Basque name "Ynigo"— latinized as "Ignatius," Chaney, passim.
2. ^ See: The Masque of Augurs; The Staple of News; A Tale of a Tub; Love's Welcome at Bolsover. Jonson's follower Richard Brome also took a swipe at Jones in The Weeding of Covent Garden.

References

• Hart, Vaughan. Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts. London, Routledge, 1994.
• Chaney, Edward, The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance, London, Routledge, 2000.
• Leapman, Michael. Inigo: The Troubled Life of Inigo Jones, Architect of the English Renaissance. London, Headline Book Publishing, 2003.
• Chaney, Edward, Inigo Jones's 'Roman Sketchbook', 2 vols, London, The Roxburghe Club, 2006.
• Giles Worsley, Inigo Jones and the European Classicist Tradition (New Haven and London, 2007).
• Christy Anderson, Inigo Jones and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge, 2007).

External links

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"Inigo Jones" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.

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