Jones, Inigo

(1573-1652)

   Inigo Jones is credited with bringing Palladianism to England. He was born in Smithfield to a cloth worker and is mentioned in documents dating to 1603 as a picture maker. Soon thereafter, he went to Italy where he must have seen Andrea Palladio's buildings. By 1605, he is recorded in London working for Queen Anne of Denmark, James I's wife, designing costumes and sceneries for masks in a Palladian style. In 1610, Inigo was working for Prince Henry, James' son, as his official surveyor and, following Henry's death (1612), he became the Surveyor of the King's Works (1613). At this time, Inigo returned to Italy as the escort to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, visiting Milan, Parma, Venice, Bologna, Siena, Florence, and Rome. Inigo brought with him his copy of Palladio's Quattro Libri and made notations on the margins as he studied his buildings.

   Having returned to England in 1615, in the following year he received the commission to build the Queen's House in Greenwich for Henrietta Maria, Charles I's wife, a commission he completed in 1635. The structure, composed of two equal squares connected by a covered bridge, utilized a Palladian vocabulary, mathematical proportions, and emphasis on symmetry—features that up to that point had not been seen in England. In 1619-1622, Inigo was also occupied with the building of the Banqueting House in Whitehall Palace, London, meant to function as the reception hall for foreign dignitaries, to host official ceremonies, and to replace the previous banqueting hall that had burned down in 1619. Here too the design derived from Palladio, and specifically the Palazzo Thiene, illustrated in the Quattro Libri, and the Basilica in Vincenza, the Venetian architect's reinterpretation of an ancient basilican plan as described by Vitruvius. Inigo's façade is raised on a podium and utilizes the Colosseum principle. Originally, each level was faced with a different colored stone, replaced in the 19th century with a stark white front. The frieze still carries the swags and masks intended by Inigo to denote the function of the building. The interior is in essence a large, open hall, meant to house large numbers of peoples, its ceiling decorated with a magnificent painting by Peter Paul Rubens depicting the Apotheosis of James I (1629), installed there in 1635. Charles I was beheaded in front of the Banqueting House in 1649.