JONES, INIGO, a celebrated English architect, the son of a cloth-worker of London, was born in 1572. He was at first put as apprentice to a joiner; but having early distinguished himself by his inclination for drawing or designing, he was particularly noticed for his skill in landscape-painting. This afterwards recommended him to the favour of William earl of Pembroke, who sent him abroad with a handsome allowance, in order to perfect himself in that branch. He had no sooner arrived at Rome, than he found himself in his proper sphere; he felt that nature had not formed him to decorate cabinets, but to design palaces. He accordingly dropped the pencil, and conceived Whitehall. In the state of Venice he saw the works of Palladio, and learned that refined taste may be exerted on a less theatre than the capital of an empire. How he distinguished himself in a place where he had no opportunity to display his talents, we are not informed, though it would not be the least curious part of his history. Certain it is, however, that, on the strength of his reputation at Venice, Christian IV. invited him to Denmark, and appointed him his architect; but on what buildings he was employed in that country we have yet to learn. James I. found him at Copenhagen, and Queen Anne took him, in the capacity of her architect, to Scotland. He served Prince Henry in the same capacity, and the place of surveyor-general of the works was granted to him in reversion. On the death of that prince, Jones travelled once more into Italy, and assisted by maturity of judgment, perfected his taste. To the interval between these voyages Mr Walpole is inclined to attribute those buildings of Jones which are less pure, and border too much upon the bastard style. Inigo's designs of that period are not Gothic, but have a littleness of parts, and a weight of ornament, with which the revival of the Grecian taste was encumbered, and which he shook off in his grander designs. The surveyor's place having become vacant, he returned to England; and, as if architecture was not all he had learned at Rome, he disinterestedly gave up the profits of his office, which he found extremely in debt, and prevailed upon the comptroller and paymaster to imitate his example, until the whole arrears were cleared off.
In 1620 he was employed in a manner very unworthy of his genius, King James having set him upon discovering, or rather guessing, who were the founders of Stonehenge. But his ideas were all Roman; consequently, his partiality to his favourite people, which ought rather to have prevented him from charging them with that mass of barbarous clumsiness, made him conclude that it was a Roman temple.
In the same year Jones was appointed one of the commissioners for the repair of St Paul's; but this was not commenced till the year 1633, when Laud, then bishop of London, laid the first stone, and Inigo the fourth. In the restoration of that cathedral he made two capital faults. He first renewed the sides with very bad Gothic; and then added a Roman portico, magnificent indeed, but which had no affinity to the ancient parts that remained, and made his own Gothic appear ten times heavier. He committed the same error at Winchester, thrusting a screen in the Roman or Grecian taste into the middle of that cathedral. Jones indeed was by no means successful when he attempted Gothic. The chapel of Lincoln's Inn
has none of the characteristics of that architecture. The cloister beneath seems oppressed by the weight of the building above.
The authors of the life of Jones place the erection of the Banqueting House in the reign of King Charles; but it appears, from the accounts of Nicholas Stone, that it was begun in 1619, and finished in two years, being a small part of the pile designed for the palace of our kings, but so complete in itself, that it stands as a model of its kind. Several plates of the intended palace at Whitehall have been given, but, Mr Walpole thinks, from no finished design. The four great sheets are evidently made up from general hints; nor could such a source of invention and taste as the mind of Inigo ever produce so much sameness. The whole fabric, however, was so great an idea, that, according to Walpole, one forgets for a moment, in the regret for its not being executed, the confirmation of our liberties, obtained by a melancholy scene that passed before the windows of that very Banqueting House.
In 1623 he was employed at Somerset House, where a chapel was to be fitted up for the Infanta, the intended bride of the prince. The chapel is still in existence. The front to the river, part only of what was designed, and the water-gate, were afterwards erected on the designs of Inigo, as was the gate at York Stairs.
On the accession of Charles, Jones was continued in his posts under both king and queen. His fee as surveyor was eight shillings and fourpence a day, with an allowance of L.46 a year for house-rent, besides a clerk, and incidental expenses. What other remuneration he received, or whether he received any at all, we have not been informed.
During the prosperous state of the king's affairs, the pleasures of the court were indulged in with much taste and magnificence. Poetry, painting, music, and architecture, were all called in to contribute rational amusements. Mr Walpole is of opinion, indeed, that the celebrated festivals of Louis XIV. were copied from the shows exhibited at Whitehall, in his time the most polite court in Europe. Ben Jonson was the laureate; Inigo Jones the inventor of the decorations; Laniere and Ferabosco composed the symphonies; whilst the king, the queen, and the young nobility, danced in the interludes. We have accounts of many of those entertainments called "masques," which had been introduced by Anne of Denmark. Lord Burlington had a folio of the designs for these solemnities, by Inigo's own hand, consisting of habits, masks, scenes, and so forth. The harmony of these masks was a little interrupted by a war which broke out between the composers, Inigo and Ben, in which, whoever was the aggressor, the turbulent temper of Jonson took care to put him most in the wrong.
The works of Inigo Jones are not scarce; and Surgeons' Hall is one of his best performances. One of the most admired is the arcade of Covent-garden, and the church; "two structures," says Mr Walpole, "of which I want taste to see the beauties. In the arcade there is nothing remarkable; the pilasters are as arrant and homely stripes as any plasterer could make. The barn-roof over the portico of the church strikes my eyes with as little idea of dignity and beauty as it could do if it covered nothing but a barn. It must be owned, that the defect is not in the architect, but in the order. Who ever saw a beautiful Tuscan building? Would the Romans have chosen that order for a temple?" The expense of building the church amounted to L.4500.
Ambresbury in Wiltshire was designed by Jones, but executed by his scholar Webb. Jones was one of the first who observed the same diminution in pilasters as in pillars. Lindsay House in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he built, owes its chief grace to this singularity. In 1618, a
Jones, Sir special commission was issued to the Lord Chancellor, the Williams. Earls of Worcester, Pembroke, Arundel, and others, to plant and reduce to uniformity Lincoln's-Inn Fields, as it should be drawn by way of map or ground-plot, by Inigo Jones, surveyor-general of the works. That square is laid out with a regard to so trifling a singularity, as to be of the exact dimensions of one of the Pyramids; a conceit which would have been admired in those ages when the keep at Kenilworth Castle was erected in the form of an horse-fetter, and the Escorial in the shape of St Laurence's gridiron.
Coleshill in Berkshire, the seat of Sir Matthew Pleydell, built in 1650, and Cobham Hall in Kent, were works of Jones. He was employed to rebuild Castle Ashby, and finished one front; but the civil war interrupted his progress there and at Stoke Park in Northamptonshire. Shaftesbury House, now the London Lying-in Hospital, on the east side of Aldersgate Street, is a beautiful front of his. The Grange, the seat of Lord Henley, in Hampshire, is entirely of this master. It is by no means a large house, but one of the best proofs of his taste. The hall, which opens to a small vestibule with a cupola, and the staircase adjoining, are beautiful models of the purest and most classic antiquity. The gate of Beaufort Garden at Chelsea, designed by Jones, was purchased by Lord Burlington, and transported to Chiswick. He also drew a plan for a palace at Newmarket. One of the most beautiful of his works is the queen's house at Greenwich. The first idea of the hospital is said to have been taken from his papers by his scholar Webb. Heriot's Hospital in Edinburgh, and the improvements made in his time on Glamis Castle, Forfarshire, Scotland, are specimens of the designs of Inigo Jones.
Inigo tasted early the misfortunes of his master. Being not only a favourite, but a Roman Catholic, he in 1646 paid L.545 for his delinquency and sequestration. Whether it was before or after this fine, it is uncertain, that he and Stone the mason buried their joint stock in Scotland yard; but an order being published to encourage the informers of such concealments, and four persons being privy to the spot where the money was hidden, it was taken up, and reburied in Lambeth marsh. Grief, misfortunes, and age, put a period to his life, at Somerset House, on the 21st of July 1651. Several of his designs have been published by Mr Kent, Mr Colin Campbell, and Mr Isaac Ware. He left in manuscript some curious notes on Palladio's architecture, which are inserted in an edition of Palladio published in 1714.