Jones, Inigo (1573–1652)

JONES, INIGO (1573–1652)

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.

See also Britain, Architecture in ; London ; Palladio, Andrea, and Palladianism ; Wren, Christopher .

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