Inigo Jones (1573 - c1652)
Introduced Palladian style of architecture to England
Surveyor
of the King's Works (1615 - 1635)
- Designed the Queen's
House, Greenwich
(1616 - 1635)
- Banqueting Hall, Whitehall, London
(1619 - 1622)
- Although Jones' work often
lack originality, he was an important figure in architecture because he
was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian
Renaissance to Gothic England.
Biography
English architect, founder of the English school of classical architecture.
He was born shortly before July 19th, 1573, the date of his baptism in the
church of St. Batholomew of the Less, Smithfield,
London. Jones
was the son of a cloth worker also named Inigo. The name has never been
satisfactorily explained. It was Latinized as Igna 959t1917j tius as early as 1606 but is
not a recognised equivalent. Of the younger Inigo Jones' early years nothing is
known, though Sir
Christopher Wren is said to have stated that he was apprenticed to a joiner
in St Paul's Churchyard.
In 1603 he appears in the fifth earl of Rutland's
household accounts as "Henygo Jones, a picturemaker," and two years
later was employed by James I's queen (Anne of Denmark) to provide the costumes
and settings for a masque to be performed at Whitehall. It is certain that by this time he
had been to Italy
and had acquired considerable skill as a draftsman and architect. In 1608 he
designed the New Exchange in the Strand (demolished in 1737) for the earl of Salisbury. To the same
period belongs a design for a spire in old St Paul's Cathedral. His main employment at
the time however was the designing of masques for the court, and this activity
continued with few intermissions till 1640. In this sphere he frequently
collaborated with Ben Jonson; their association was broken after a bitter
quarrel in 1631.
In 1611 Jones was appointed surveyor to the young heir apparent, Prince
Henry, who died in the following year. In April 1613 he was granted the
reversion of the surveyor-ship of the kings works. In the same month he left England
in the suite of the fourteenth earl of Arundel, ostensibly to attend the prince
palatine homeward after his marriage to James I's daughter. Arundal, with a
small party, including Jones, went on to Italy
where he visited Venice, Vicenza,
Bologna, Florence,
Siena, Rome and Genoa, returning to England in 1614. This journey was
of great importance to Jones, who was able to visit or revisit the principal
antiquities and the works of some of the moderns, especially Palladio. In Venice he conversed with
Scamozzi. In the year after Jones' return home, Simon Basil, the surveyor of
the kings works, died, and Jones succeeded him.
Neither Basil nor his predecessors in this office had been men of
exceptional attainments, the royal works in Queen Elizabeth's time having been
little more than a palace maintenance department. Jones was the first surveyor
to be universally recognised, on his appointment, as an architect (the word was
scarcely used in England
before 1600) of outstanding skill. His first important task as surveyor was to
build a house at Greenwich
for the queen. It was begun in 1617 but suspended on her death in 1619 and only
completed in 1635. In 1619 old Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace
was burned down and the present structure begun. Completed in 1622, it received
the ceiling paintings by Rubens in 1635. In 1620, at the request of St James,
Jones undertook a study of the ruins of Stonehenge
and came to the mistaken conclusion that they had been a Roman temple. In
addition to these works for James I, Jones made additions to the palace of
Newmarket (demolished) and built a chapel (1623) at St James' Palace for the
reception of Prince Charles' catholic bride (now Marlborough House Chapel).
On the prince's accession in 1625, as Charles
I, work began on additions to Somerset House, assigned as a residence to
the new queen (Henrietta Maria), and this included a large and costly chapel
(all demolished). Another major work of this period was the restoration of St Paul's Cathedral, under
a scheme begun by William Laud as Bishop of London in 1631. Jones attempted to
render into classical terms the whole of the nave and transepts of the Gothic
church, adding at the west end a magnificent Corinthian portico. Work was
stopped on the eve of the Civil War, and the whole cathedral was demolished
after the great fire of 1666.
As the king's agent, Inigo Jones exercised a notable influence on the
development of London and the design of the London house. At Convent
Garden he created London's first "square" (1630) on land developed by
the fourth earl of Bedford, and designed the church of St Paul, inspired by
Palladio's version of the Tuscon order. The "piazzas" of Convent Garden (the Italian word was Anglicised
to describe the arcaded rows rather than the space between them) have been
rebuilt, but the church, much altered, survives.
With the onset of the Civil War in 1642 and the seizure of the king's houses
by the parliament the following year, Jones employment as surveyor ceased. In
1645 he was at the siege and burning of Basing House, from which he was rescued
in a blanket. His property was sequestrated but restored in 1646. He obtained
lodgings at Somerset House, and there he died on June 21, 1652. He was buried
in the Church of St
Benet, Paul's Wharf, where a monument was erected (destroyed
1666) bearing representations in relief of the portico of St
Paul's and the church at Convent
Garden.
Inigo Jones detached himself entirely from the older vernacular and Flemish
ornamentalism to which the term "Jacobean" normally applies. His
authorities were Serlio, Palladio, and Scamozzi. Of these, Palladio was the
most important and the so-called "Pallidian" movement of the
eighteenth century was in effect largely an Inigo Jones revival. Of his
surviving buildings the Banqueting House at Whitehall
and the Queen's House at Greenwich
are the most important. They show an individual mastery of classical design
with a thorough understanding of its geometrical basis. His distinction has
been somewhat obscured by a mass of wrong attributions but recent studies have
clarified his outstanding genius. The main collection of his drawings are at
Chatsworth House (masque designs), the Royal Institute of British Architects
(Burlington-Devonshire collection) and Worcester
College, Oxford
(including designs which date from about 1638 for a complete rebuilding of Whitehall Palace).
Inigo
Jones on Stonehenge
The rustic quality of the 16th-century restoration, was transformed by the
architect Inigo Jones in the 17th century into a model of order and precision.
Incapable of thinking that Druids
could have been responsible for such an imposing structure, Jones identified Stonehenge as a Roman Temple and 'restored' it
accordingly.