IIIINIGO JONES

The accession of Charles I. to the throne in 1625 marks a convenient date in the development of architectural design to consider briefly its condition and tendencies. The king and his court still exercised an enormous influence over the life and habits of the people in directions other than political. In mediæval times the king was the centre of public affairs, the pivot upon which the State turned. His own will, even his whims and fancies, counted for much. But for the last three-quarters of a century this influence had been gradually lessening, and the king’s personal power had been curtailed. It was in opposing this tendency, in endeavouring to reassert his personal ascendancy, in re-establishing his prerogatives, that Charles came into conflict with his subjects and ultimately succumbed. But bearing this state of things in mind, it will be more readily understood that the influence of the king in relation to architecture, for instance, would be very considerable; vastly more so than the influence of any individual in the present day. Charles was a man of culture, and without crediting him with an intimate knowledge of architectural design, we may well believe that he would foster the growth of a refined and scholarly version of the style at which English designers had been aiming for many years. That is to say, since the tendency was to adopt Italian ideas he would like to see them adopted thoroughly and with full knowledge. The man to do this for him was there in the person of Inigo Jones, who had already been employed by his father, and who was the only man in England possessing really competent knowledge of Italian detail. Here then was another powerful influence at work tending to divert English design from the old traditional channels.

No doubt had Charles been blessed with leisure to gratify his refined tastes, and to devote himself to the encouragement of the arts, had he been in possession of funds commensuratewith his artistic ambitions, the Italianising of English architecture would have been more rapid than it actually was. But his time was occupied with sterner matters, and the huge palace at Whitehall which he is said to have contemplated (and his father before him, according to many writers), but of which the true history will be presently outlined, never went further than to be committed to paper. What he did do, however, was to foster the seed which had been sown by his father, and which bore fruit later in the century.

The love of Charles for the fine arts was shared by many of his court. Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, caused not only the marbles which still bear his name, but many other fine relics of antiquity, to be brought to England. Inigo Jones was frequently employed by the nobility to purchase pictures and other treasures, and to see them suitably displayed in the houses they were to adorn. John Webb made it one of his claims to consideration that he had been commissioned by the “great nobility and eminent gentry” to acquire for them medals, statues, and other works of art.

Meanwhile, in the country generally, and outside the circle influenced by Inigo Jones, the old habits still prevailed, and many houses were built, including such important buildings as Aston Hall, in Warwickshire, already mentioned, in which the old arrangements of plan were retained, and all the old devices for obtaining architectural effect were used—mullioned windows, steep or curved gables, large and lofty chimney-stacks, turrets and bay-windows, with a strong infusion of Italian detail in the form of cornices and pilasters; just such devices indeed as had been employed by John Smithson and his contemporaries.

When this is borne in mind, when it is remembered what Smithson stands for, and that he lived until 1634; that Aston Hall, where Jacobean methods were still paramount, was not completed until 1635; it will be easier to grasp the significance of Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House at Whitehall (Fig.22), designed in 1619 and finished in 1622, in which there is no trace of traditional English design, which in fact approaches nearer to Italian models than any building of the seventeenth century. No wonder, considering the goal at which all designers were more or less aiming, that it was quoted as a masterpiece, as the finest flower of modern architecture in England. Thisposition it held all through the century, and indeed still holds in the opinion of many competent judges. At the time it was built it was unique, and for thirty years afterwards travellers might have searched England in vain for anything so thoroughly Italian in treatment, unless they happened to see the Queen’s House at Greenwich, or one or two other buildings by the same architect, such as Sherborne, in Gloucestershire, between Northleach and Burford, which was described in 1634 as a “stately, rich, compacted Building all of Free-stone, flat, and couer’d with Lead, with Strong Battlements about, not much unlike to that goodly, and magnificent Building the Banquetting House at Whitehall.”[6]

Fig. 22.—The Banqueting House, Whitehall, 1619–22.

The Banqueting House must not be regarded as a step in the normal development of English design; it was something outside, the work of a specially trained and exceptionally gifted man, who achieved in 1619 what less learned and less skilful men were striving after, consciously or unconsciously, for nearly half a century afterwards.

The ultimate influence of Inigo Jones on English architecture was so important that it is desirable to know something of his training and of his history. He was born in 1573, the parish of St Bartholomew, Smithfield.[7]The church register records his baptism: “Enego Jones the sonne of Enego Jones was christened the xixth day of July 1573.” His father was a cloth-worker in good circumstances at that time, but when the lad was sixteen years old, the father was obliged to compound with his creditors. There were other children, but it would seem that only Inigo and three sisters survived their father, who died in the early months of 1597; as he left his property to be divided among his four children, he must, to a certain extent, have recovered from his financial embarrassments. In any event it would appear that Inigo the younger was left to make his own career. It is not known where he received his education, nor how thorough, or otherwise, it was: but it was apparently up to the average bestowed upon youths of his condition, and probably of much the same character,mutatis mutandis, as would be acquired by boys of the upper middle class to-day.[8]That he was a man of culture is indicated by a copy of rhymes in Latin written by Thomas Cariat (Coryat) of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1611, and preserved among the State Papers.[9]They describe a philosophical feast, among the guests at which was Inigo Jones. There is a tradition, but without evidence to support it, that he was apprenticed to a joiner in St Paul’s Churchyard. If this were so, it would at least give him an amount of practical knowledge which would be of material assistance in his later career. But his early training is really a matter for conjecture. He says in the preface to “Stone-Heng Restored”: “Being naturally inclined in my younger years to study the arts of design, I passed into foreign parts toconverse with the great masters thereof in Italy; where I applied myself to search out the Ruins of those ancient Buildings, which, in despite of Time itself, and violence of Barbarians, are yet remaining. Having satisfied myself in these, and returning to my native country, I applied my mind more particularly to the study of Architecture.”

At whose expense he passed into foreign parts, or in what year he first did so, there is no record. But it is agreed that he paid two visits to Italy, the first somewhere about the year 1600; the second in 1613–14. Of the first visit little or nothing is known;[10]but of the second there are definite records in the shape of his sketch-book preserved at Chatsworth, and of his marginal notes on a copy of Palladio which he carried with him from place to place, and which is now in Worcester College, Oxford.

During his first visit he seems to have achieved such a reputation that Christian IV., King of Denmark and brother of the queen of James I., invited him to enter his service. Here, again, there is no reliable information as to his achievements; the only evidence indeed is of a negative character and consists of the remark of a Danish gentleman to the effect that “your great architect left nothing to my country but the fame of his presence.”

On his return to England he seems to have been occupied chiefly in the devising of masques and plays, among the earliest of which were some given at Christ Church, Oxford, to entertain James I. Oddly enough the comment of the chronicler in this case is that he “undertook to further them much and furnish them with rare devices, but performed very little of that which was expected.”[11]That this failure must have been an exceptional case is sufficiently proved by the numerous drawings of scenery by him preserved at Chatsworth.

Soon after his return to England he was appointed surveyor to the queen (Anne of Denmark), and in the year 1610 surveyor of the works to Henry, Prince of Wales, but there is no recordof these appointments having resulted in any architectural work. Prince Henry died in 1612, and in 1613 Jones secured the reversion, after Simon Basil, of the office of surveyor of works to the king.[12]In the same year he went to Italy for the second time, where he studied the work of celebrated painters and architects, as well as the splendid remains of ancient architecture which were even more abundant in those days than in these. His intercourse with living architects and painters shaped his own methods of study and design, and there can be no doubt that he returned not only fully equipped to undertake any work that might fall to his lot, but deeply imbued with the spirit of Italian art and the prevalent Italian methods of design.

He walked on a high plane, his outlook was wider than that of any of his contemporaries at home. He had acquired conceptions of architecture nobler than those engendered by its application to the ordinary needs of daily life. He has left us very little record of his own opinions on any subject; it is all the more interesting, therefore, to find in his sketch-book, under the date, “Friday ye20 January 1614” (1615 new style), a page of reflections of which the following is the gist. “In all designing of ornament one must first design the ground plain as it is for use, and then adorn and compose it with decorum according to its use. To say true, all this composed ornament resulting from abundance of design, such as was brought in by Michael Angelo and his followers, does not in my opinion suit solid architecture but is more appropriate to gardens, the ornaments of chimneys, friezes and the inside of houses, where such things must of necessity be used. For as outwardly every wise man carries himself gravely in public places, yet inwardly has imagination and fire which sometimes flies out unrestrained, just as Nature sometimes flies out to delight or amuse us, to move us to laughter, contemplation, or even horror; so in architecture the outward ornament is to be solid, proportionable according to rule, masculine and unaffected.”

No epithets more suitable than the two last—masculine and unaffected—could be applied to Jones’s own work.

Fig. 23.—St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden. West Front.From an Engraving by Thomas Sandby.

Fig. 23.—St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden. West Front.

From an Engraving by Thomas Sandby.

Fig. 24.—The Piazza, Covent Garden.From an Engraving by Thomas Sandby.

Fig. 24.—The Piazza, Covent Garden.

From an Engraving by Thomas Sandby.

Fig. 25.—Ground Plan, Queen’s House, Greenwich, 1635.

The amount of Jones’s own work in architecture is scarcely so large as has hitherto been supposed. In regard to the various buildings with which he has been credited, some ofthe attributions are supported by contemporary evidence in the shape of drawings or of references in letters and documents; others by the direct enumeration of his staunch admirer, John Webb, who was his pupil and assistant, who married a kinswoman of his, and was the executor of his will. Others rest upon tradition or upon the opinions of critics. Tradition is not altogether reliable, owing partly to a natural tendency to attribute any outstanding piece of work to the most celebrated artist of the time, and partly to the natural desire of owners to attach a well-known name to their possessions. The value of a critic’s opinion obviously depends upon that uncertain factor—the ability and equipment of the critic for his task, and although the opinion of a competent critic will always count for much, it cannot count for so much as direct evidence. The evidence in this case consists of allusions in contemporary letters, not very numerous or helpful; of architectural drawings by Jones, which are helpful but not numerous; and of the testimony of Webb, who was in the best position to know what his master actually designed. Webb has occasion in his “Vindication of Stone-Heng Restored,” to mention Jones’s principal works, which he thus enumerates: The west portico of St Paul’s Cathedral, and the reducing-of the body of it “from the steeple to the west end, into that order and uniformity we now behold”;[13]St Paul’s, CoventGarden (Fig.23), “built likewise with the porticoes about the Piazza there by Mr. Jones” (Fig.24)[14]; the royal chapels at Denmark House and St James’s;[15]the Banqueting House at Whitehall; the royal house at Newmarket;[15]and the queen mother’s new building at Greenwich.[16]The inscription on Jones’s monument which was put up by Webb, designated him as “architectus celeberrimus,” and recorded merely that he built the Royal White Hall (Aul. Alb. Reg.) and restored the Cathedral of St Paul.[17]

Fig. 26.—The Queen’s House, Greenwich, 1619–35.

Fig. 27.—Elevation.

Fig. 28.—Coleshill, Berkshire, 1650. Ground Plan.

This list need not necessarily be considered as complete, but Webb evidently regarded the buildings he mentions as the most noteworthy of Jones’s productions, inasmuch as he advances them as proofs of his skill in architecture, upon which his fame would rest much more securely than upon his literary and antiquarian effort in “Stone-Heng Restored.”[18]

The authority for the attribution to Jones of other buildings, such as the enlargement of Somerset House, the chirurgeon’stheatre, and King Charles’s block at Greenwich, rests upon the Worcester College and Burlington-Devonshire drawings, but these buildings should more properly be credited to Webb, by whose hand they were drawn.

COLESHILL HOVSE:Fig. 29.—ELEVATION OF COLESHILL.

COLESHILL HOVSE:

Fig. 29.—ELEVATION OF COLESHILL.

The largest design by far which has hitherto been ascribed to Jones is that for the great palace at Whitehall, but it will be presently shown that the ascription is wrong, and that here also the chief credit ought to be given to John Webb.

But although in the interests of historical accuracy it is necessary to throw doubt upon much of the work with which Inigo Jones has been credited, what remains is sufficient to establish his fame, and it is beyond controversy that he was regarded as the “Vitruvius of his age.” What he undoubtedly did was to introduce into England a refined and scholarly rendering of that Italian manner at which all designers had been aiming for half a century. As Webb says in addressing Dr Charleton, “I must tell you that what was truly meant by the Art of Design was scarcely known in this kingdom, until he, under the protection of his late Sacred Majesty, and that famous Mœcenas of Arts, the Right Honourable Thomas Earl of Arundel and Surrey, brought it in use and esteem among us here.” We can also agree with him when he says that “Mr. Jones was generally learned, eminent for Architecture, a great geometrician, and in designing with his pen (as Sir Anthony Vandike used to say) not to be equalled by whatever great masters in his time, for boldness, softness, sweetness, and sureness of his touches.”[19]Of the buildings ascribed by Webb to Inigo Jones there remain but three—the Banqueting House, St Paul’s, Covent Garden, which has been much altered, and the Queen’s House at Greenwich, which was begun in 1619 and finished in 1635. It is quite as far removed as the Banqueting House from the traditional type of English design. It is essentially Italian both in plan and elevation (Figs.25–27), and it indicates how completely Inigo Jones had departed from the old ways. The original drawings for the house itself have not been preserved, but there exist several sketches by Jones’s hand of chimney-pieces and other details connected with it.[20]

Fig. 30.—COLESHILL.The Staircase.

Another house attributed to Jones on fairly good evidence is Coleshill, in Berkshire, which stands on a steep hillside facing westwards across the valley to Highworth. It is a striking embodiment of that cultivated manner in architecture which was begun by Jones, continued by Webb, and was destined gradually to supersede the traditional methods of the countryside. Although thoroughly English in feeling it could never have been devised without an intimate knowledge of Italian detail. It is simple, dignified, and regular, depending for its effect upon nice proportion and skilful detail, not at all upon picturesque variety or broken grouping. It is a plain oblong in plan, without wings or projections (Fig.28); it is lofty in elevation, without gables or even a pediment (Fig.29); the corners are emphasised with bold quoins, the roof springs from a widely projecting cornice, and is crowned with a stout balustrade surrounding a spacious lead-covered flat, out of which rises a large central cupola. The slopes of the roof are diversified with dormers; the massive chimney-stacks are accurately and symmetrically placed, each answering to each. There is nothing about it haphazard or unexpected, nothing quaint or piquant; everything is correct, regular, and stately. It cannot, however, be deemed, like Tennyson’s Maud,

“Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,”

for its effect is both striking and attractive; it is noble without being oppressively grand.

The simplicity of the exterior arises from the simplicity of the plan. The ground floor, which is mainly occupied by the reception rooms and the great staircase, is raised high above the ground, thus leaving space for the windows of the basement, which is devoted to the kitchens and servants’ quarters. The upper floor contains the grand saloon and bedrooms; in the roof are commodious attics; a staircase in the cupola leads on to the flat roof, whence fine views are obtained of the distant Marlborough Downs.

Although the house is of considerable size, the accommodation is not ample in proportion; the bedrooms are large and lofty, but few in number. Homeliness is somewhat sacrificed to stateliness. It is inevitable that these fine, regular houses should have the defects of their qualities.

Fig. 31.—COLESHILL.Ceiling of the Hall.

The plan is as different from the traditional plan of Englishhouses as are those in Kent’s “Designs of Inigo Jones,” a collection which will be dealt with more particularly later on. There is no great hall connecting the parlours with the kitchens, and serving itself as one of the chief living-rooms. The servants are relegated to the basement, the whole of the ground floor is given up to the family, the hall is more of a vestibule than a living-room. In former times the staircase, although often handsomely treated, consisted of a single series of flights occupying a compact space. At Coleshill a vast hall is devoted to the staircase, or rather to two staircases, each equally eligible, starting from the same place and terminating at either end of the same landing (Fig.30).

Although the servants were sent half underground, some of the stateliness followed them, and the approach to the back door is flanked by two massive pillars, each of which contains a coved niche.

Fig. 32.—Raynham Park, Norfolk. Ground Plan.

The building is attributed to Inigo Jones on the testimony of a tablet in the house, and its date, according to the same authority, is 1650. In the absence of any other evidence this assertion, although not contemporaneous with the building, may be accepted;[21]but it should be remembered that Jones died in 1652, and that the last years of his life, or almost the last, were spent in the turmoil of the Civil War. So much did the unrest disturb his life that he appointed John Webb to be his deputy in the office of surveyor of the works.[22]In any case it must have been either Jones or Webb who designed Coleshill, for there was nobody else who had at that time received the training necessary to produce it.

There are several fine ceilings (Fig.31) wrought in Jones’s bold fashion, which was as different from that which produced the busy and slender patterns of Elizabethan work, as was the general treatment of plan and elevation from that of an Elizabethan mansion. It is interesting to find one of the smaller rooms panelled in an earlier style, Jacobean in character, with panelling designed for its position, not imported from elsewhere; and as it is difficult to suppose that Jones would have departedfrom his usual manner in this particular case, it is probable that the room was left to the unaided skill of some local craftsman, who relied on his own traditions.

Fig. 33.—RAYNHAM PARK,Norfolk,cir.1636.Garden Front.

Of Jones’s connection with Raynham Park, in Norfolk (Figs.32,33), there is no evidence beyond tradition and the style of the work itself; but much of this has touches about it which are quite in his manner. There are indications that the house was built at two periods, and these make it difficult to attribute the whole work to one designer. But the treatment of the front, with its two wings of decided though slight projection, and its rather heavily-curved gables, serves to make it a connecting link between the old and the new styles. The date of this house is generally stated to be 1636, but further investigation is required in order to arrive at its true history, and to account for the two periods of building.

At Wilton, in Wiltshire, is some of the finest of Jones’s internal work, and his connection with this house is established by a series of designs for the ceilings preserved among the Worcester College drawings. The south front, of which there is a sketch in the R.I.B.A. collection, would hardly have served to make his reputation, but the splendid suite of state rooms is unrivalled in any English house. One of these is a double cube, being 60 ft. by 30 ft. by 30 ft. high, and another is a single cube of 30 ft. The double cube, with its stately panelling filled with Vandyke’s portraits of the family, deserves its reputation as the finest room in the country (Fig.34). A plain, double cube of these dimensions would be unpleasantly lofty (as may be realised by visiting one at St James’s Palace), but here at Wilton the great height is lessened to the eye by the introduction of a large cove which springs from a bold cornice some 9 ft. below the ceiling, thus reducing the height of the walls to 21 ft.

The double cube and such precise proportions were quite new in English architecture; so also were the careful proportions of the windows and their relation to the wall space, the pervading refinement of the mouldings, and the simplicity (almost amounting to baldness in some cases) of the general treatment. These factors inevitably influenced the plan of the house, which became much less elastic than of old, and less adaptable to the wants of English life. They tended towards the glorification of the house at the expense of its inhabitants and to subordinate household comfort to architecture.

Fig. 34.—WILTON HOUSE,Wiltshire. The Double Cube Room.About 1649.

A small but admirable piece of work which may safely be assigned to Jones is the water-gate of York House (Fig.35). Its present rather forlorn situation at the bottom of Buckingham Street, Strand, gives no indication that it was an adjunct of the town house of the princely Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the “Steenie” of Charles I. York House, for so the place was called, had belonged to the Archbishops of York, but when it came into the hands of Buckingham, he pulled it down and built a large and temporary structure, apparently for the purpose of using it for state occasions. Within its walls he housed a magnificent collection of pictures and other works of art, purchased from Rubens.[23]Gerbier (who will be mentioned again later) was employed by the duke to design some of the new work at York House, and hence the water-gate has been attributed to him. But the fact that a drawing of it by Webb is included among the “Inigo Jones” drawings precludes this idea, for it is hard to imagine either Jones or Webb condescending to delineate any work of Gerbier’s. Apart from this it is improbable that Gerbier could have designed anything so good. That excellent mason and sculptor, Nicholas Stone, was employed upon its execution, and he put in a claim to the design, but Webb’s drawing is a sufficient answer to this pretension also.

York House was sold in 1672 by the second duke, the “chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon” of Dryden, to a syndicate who pulled down the house, and covered the site with new buildings, leaving the water-gate as practically the sole relic of the old palace. Its appearance, backed by its newer neighbours, is well indicated in a drawing by Thomas Sandby, made about 1760 (reproduced as the frontispiece).

Inigo Jones died in June 1652.[24]His will is dated the 22nd July 1650, when he was “aged seaventy-seaven yeares.” He left in specified sums the amount of £4,150, and he bequeathed the debt owing to him from the late king and queen, of which the amount is not stated, in equal shares to his executor, John Webb, and one Richard Gammon, a carpenter, after deducting £50 for the paymaster of the works payable within a month after the discharge of the debt. He disposes of one half of his wearing apparel, but does not mention the other half, nor doeshe dispose of the residue of his estate. He mentions no collection of drawings (as did John Webb) nor any books. On the face of it he can hardly be considered a wealthy man at his death. A really exhaustive account of his life has yet to be written; one which shall be free from the undemonstrable attribution of work to him; free from baseless eulogy on the one hand and detraction on the other; one which shall fairly balance tradition and evidence; which shall take account of him as an artist and scene-painter, as a surveyor dealing from day to day with prosaic details, and as an architectural designer. It has been no part of the present purpose to enter minutely into these particulars; it was outside the scope of this work to marshal all the evidence for or against his authorship of every building with which he has been credited. The aim has been to indicate the general influence he had upon English architecture, particularly in respect of house design.

Fig. 35.—The Water-Gate of York House, London.

He was the most notable figure that had hitherto appeared upon the stage of English architecture, the most refined and scholarly, with an exquisite sense of proportion. He was at heart an artist, just as Wren was at heart a man of science.

Fig. 36.—Drawing by Inigo Jones for the Banqueting House, Whitehall. This drawing was carried out, but with slight modifications; the pediment was omitted, the roof being flat, with a balustrade.From the Chatsworth Collection, by kind permission of the Duke of Devonshire.

Fig. 36.—Drawing by Inigo Jones for the Banqueting House, Whitehall. This drawing was carried out, but with slight modifications; the pediment was omitted, the roof being flat, with a balustrade.

From the Chatsworth Collection, by kind permission of the Duke of Devonshire.

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