Inigo Jones

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)

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

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)

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652)

English architect who introduced the building styles of the Italian Renaissance to his native country. Jones was born in London, the son of a Catholic cloth-worker. Sometime in the late sixteenth century, he traveled to Italy, and lived for a time in Venice. He also spent time at the court of King Christian IV of Denmark. In Italy he studied the designs of Andrea Palladio, whose villas and monuments were inspired by the classical architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. Jones absorbed the ideals of classical architecture through Palladio and the writings of Vitruvius, an ancient Roman author on architecture who set out in his book De Architectura the ideals of harmonious proportions and balanced elements.

Jones returned to England in 1601. His talents were noticed by King James I, and he was appointed official court surveyor to Henry, the son of James and heir apparent. Jones won commissions to design several important London buildings, including the New Exchange in the London quarter known as the Strand. Jones also designed scenery for court masques, short allegorical dramas that combined theater, music, and dance. He returned to Italy in 1614, in the company of the Earl of Arundel. On his return to England, James appointed him as the Surveyor of the King's Works. In this position Jones designed the Banqueting House at the palace of Whitehall. As a Catholic, however, Jones came under general suspicion from those fearing a Catholic attempt to return England to the authority of the pope.

Jones's most famous buildings include several country mansions, including Lind-sey House, Shaftesbury House, the Queen's House at Greenwich, and the Grange. He also designed public places, including the London square known as Lincoln's Inn and the district known as Covent Garden that Jones developed on the model of ancient Roman market towns known as bastides. On commission of King Charles I, Jones also became the first to survey the prehistoric monument known as Stonehenge, in southern England. Jones opined in his book Stone-Heng Restored that the towering pillars of Stonehenge represented the remains of a Roman temple.

On the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 Jones fled London. The conflict ended with the execution of his patron Charles I; Jones's property was seized and he lost his position as the royal surveyor. He was officially pardoned in 1646 and lived out his days in obscurity and poverty. His reputation grew after his death, however, as his buildings and his classical ideals became an important model for future generations of English builders.

See Also: architecture; Palladio, Andrea; Vitruvius

Jones, Inigo (bapt. London, 19 July 1573; d London, 21 June 1652). English architect, stage designer, draughtsman, and painter. Jones was one of the greatest of English architects and certainly the most influential, introducing a pure classical style based on the work of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio to a country where Renaissance influence had previously been fairly superficial. It was not until he was in his forties, however, that he showed his genius as an architect, and the first known mention of him as an artist is as a ‘picture maker’ in 1603. No paintings certainly by him are known, but his drawings survive in large numbers (the finest collection is at Chatsworth). They are mainly costume and scenery designs for the court masques, on which he worked from 1605 to 1640, and in which he introduced movable scenery and the proscenium arch into England. Inigo's lively and fluent style as a draughtsman reflects two lengthy visits to Italy (c.1600 and 1613–14), the second of them accompanying the great collector the Earl of Arundel. He advised Arundel on the purchase of Italian antiques while developing his own knowledge of Italian and antique architecture, and his learning as well as his skills gave him immense prestige in England at the courts of James I and Charles I. His principal collaborator in the masques was the formidable Ben Jonson, with whom he had a running feud about the rival claims of words and spectacle. Few of Jones's buildings survive in anything like their original state. The two most important are in London: the Queen's House at Greenwich (1616–35), for which Orazio Gentileschi provided decorations, and the Banqueting House in Whitehall (1619–22), with its painted ceiling by Rubens.

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652). English architect, stage designer, draughtsman, and painter. Jones was one of the greatest of English architects and certainly the most influential, introducing a pure classical style based on the work of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio to a country where Renaissance influence had previously been fairly superficial. It was not until he was in his forties, however, that he showed his genius as an architect, and the first known mention of him as an artist is as a ‘picture maker’ in 1603. No paintings certainly by him are known, but his drawings survive in large numbers (the finest collection is at Chatsworth). They are mainly costume and scenery designs for the court masques, on which he worked from 1605 to 1640, and in which he introduced movable scenery and the proscenium arch into England. Inigo's lively and fluent style as a draughtsman reflects two lengthy visits to Italy (c.1600 and 1613–14), the second of them accompanying the great collector the Earl of Arundel. He advised Arundel on the purchase of Italian antiques while developing his own knowledge of Italian and antique architecture, and his knowledge as well as his skills gave him immense prestige in England at the courts of James I and Charles I. His principal collaborator in the masques was the formidable Ben Jonson, with whom he had a running feud about the rival claims of words and spectacle. Few of Jones's buildings survive in anything like their original state. The two most important are in London: the Queen's House at Greenwich (1616–35), for which Orazio Gentileschi provided decorations, and the Banqueting House in Whitehall (1619–22), with its painted ceiling by Rubens.

Inigo Jones , 1573-1652, one of England's first great architects. Son of a London clothmaker, he was enabled to travel in Europe before 1603 to study paintings, perhaps at the expense of the earl of Rutland. On a second trip to Italy (1613-14) he thoroughly studied the remains of Roman architecture and the Renaissance buildings by Palladio. At the English courts of both James I and Charles I he designed settings for elaborate masques , some of which he wrote. Besides performing various architectural services for the crown, he was also sponsored by the earl of Arundel. After renewed visits to Italy, Jones became (1615) king's surveyor of the works. In 1616 he began work on the Queen's House, Greenwich, the first English design to embody Palladian principles. He then built (1619-22) the royal Banqueting House in Whitehall, London, again adapting the classical proportions and use of architectural elements he had learned in Italy. He also made designs for St. Paul's church, Covent Garden, and its square (1631-38). He built other houses in London and in the country; especially outstanding is his advisory work on Wilton House, Wiltshire (built 1649-53). Making a clean break from the prevailing Jacobean style, he achieved a magnificent coherence of design. The work of Inigo Jones marked a starting point for the classical architecture of the late Renaissance and Georgian periods in England.

Bibliography: See study by S. Orgel and R. Strong (2 vol., 1973).

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652), English architect and artist, the first to be associated with scenic decoration on the English stage. Having studied in Italy and worked in Denmark, he was in 1604–5 attached to the household of Prince Henry, eldest son of James I. In addition to his work as an architect, he was given complete control of the staging of masques presented at Court, the first being Ben Jonson's The Mask of Blackness (1605). In the same year he supervised the staging of the plays seen at Christ Church Hall, Oxford, where he first used revolving screens in the Italian manner. Later he was to use as many as five changes of scenery, with backcloths, shutters, or flats painted and arranged in perspective. The flats ran in grooves and were supplemented by a turntable (machina versatilis) which presented to the audience different facets of a solid structure. Jones also introduced into England the picture-stage framed in a proscenium arch. It is now thought that a collection of plans in the British Library by Jones's pupil and successor John Webb may include those on which Christopher Beeston rebuilt the Cockpit in 1616, but the main bulk of Jones's work is preserved in the library of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth.

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. So infectious did his derivations from the functional architecture of Andrea Palladio (1508–80) then become that until the early 19th cent. English townscapes were arguably Jonesian in their lineaments. Yet Jones personally remains frustratingly elusive, for all his arrogance and engrossing power as surveyor of the king's works (1615–44). Palladio's Four Books of Architecture were not exclusively influential, for two visits to Italy, the second with the greatest Italophile of the age, Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, brought other influences to bear, such as Serlio and Scamozzi (architectural) and Peruzzi and Parmigianino (painters and draughtsmen). 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.

David Denis Aldridge

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652), architect, stage designer, painter, mathematician, and man of letters, whose depth of knowledge of Roman and Italian art and of Renaissance theory was new in England, and whose revolutionary buildings brought the classical style to this country. He travelled abroad and developed a deep admiration for Palladio, met Scamozzi, and copied ancient Roman monuments. In 1615 he became surveyor of the King's Works; his most famous buildings are the Queen's House, Greenwich, and the Banqueting Hall, Whitehall, which mark a turning-point in English architecture. Jones's career as a designer of masques opened in 1605 and a stormy but fruitful collaboration with Jonson began with The Masque of Blacknesse, and lasted until 1630/1; their quarrel about the rival claims of the visual arts and literature was also long standing, and became notorious. Later Jones worked with other poets, producing with T. Carew, in Coelum Britannicum (1634), perhaps the most brilliant of later Caroline masques. Jones's fame in England soared between 1710 and 1760, when, with Palladio, he became one of the heroes of the Palladian movement.

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.

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652) English architect, stage designer, and painter. Jones introduced a pure classical style based on the work of Andrea Palladio. His knowledge of Italian architecture gained him enormous prestige in Jacobean and Carolingian England. Buildings include Queen's House, Greenwich (1616–35), and Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619–21).

http://www.riba-library.com/arinjon.html

Jones, Inigo (1573–1652), the first British classical architect. He studied the work of Andrea Palladio (d. 1580) in Italy. His significance as a designer of churches lies in his use of classical forms based on the ancient temple, in contrast to the contemporary Gothic style. His ecclesiastical work includes the Queen's Chapel at St James's Palace and St Paul's, Covent Garden.

Inigo Jones (1573–1652), English architect and stage designer. He introduced the Palladian style to England; notable buildings include the Queen's House at Greenwich (1616) and the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall (1619). He also pioneered the use of the proscenium arch and movable stage scenery in England.