Jones, Inigo

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652). 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 & and Higgott (1989);
J. Harris,, Orgel,, & and Strong (1973);
J. Harris & and Tait (1979);
Leapman (2003);
Lees-Milne (1953);
Millar (1987);
Mowl & and Earnshaw (1995);
Placzek (ed.)(1982);
Summerson (ed.) (1966, 1993)