Inigo Jones (1573 - c1652)

Introduced Palladian style of architecture to England

Inigo Jones Books:

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 Ignatius 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 , 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 could have been responsible for such an imposing structure, Jones identified Stonehenge as a Roman Temple and 'restored' it accordingly.