Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones was born in Smithfield, London, on the 15th of July 1573, the son of a clothworker. He would grow up to transform the face of English building forever. Before Jones, no architect in England had applied the classical rules of ancient Rome with any seriousness. He changed that entirely. The questions worth asking are not simply what he built, but how a clothworker's son from Smithfield came to redesign royal palaces, invent the modern theatrical stage, sit in Parliament, and die as the undisputed father of British architecture.
Jones did not rise through the traditional craft guilds, and he had no early connection to the Office of Works. What he did have was a talent for drawing so striking that a rich patron, possibly the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Rutland, sent him to Italy before 1603 to study the art of proportion at its source.
From Italy he travelled north to Denmark, where King Christian IV put him to work on designs for the palaces of Rosenborg and Frederiksborg. It was an unusual detour for a young Englishman, but it gave Jones his first taste of designing at royal scale.
A second Italian journey followed around 1606, likely prompted by contact with the ambassador Henry Wotton. By then, drawings Jones made between 1605 and 1609 showed a transformation: from exhibiting, in the words recorded of him, "no knowledge of Renaissance draughtsmanship" to an "accomplished Italianate manner". Jones learned to speak Italian fluently. He owned an annotated Italian copy of Andrea Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura, with marginalia that refer to Wotton. Palladio would become the dominant force in Jones's thinking, though he also held to the principles of the ancient Roman writer Vitruvius.
On the 27th of April 1613, Jones was formally appointed Surveyor of the King's Works. Almost immediately he set off again for Italy, this time accompanying the Earl of Arundel. His surviving sketchbook from that trip records a concentrated study of buildings in Rome, Padua, Florence, Vicenza, Genoa, and Venice, along with a particular fascination with the painters Parmigianino and Andrea Schiavone. He also met the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi on this journey. Jones gave clear priority to Roman antiquity over the fashionable baroque trends he found in contemporary Italy, and he was probably the first native-born Englishman to study Roman remains in person.
Jones's first fame in England had nothing to do with buildings. Between 1605 and 1640, he staged more than 500 performances, most by royal command, as the designer of masques for the court. Under the patronage of Queen Anne of Denmark, consort of King James I, he is credited with introducing two things that would permanently alter English theatre: movable scenery and the proscenium arch.
His method for creating movement used what he called "machina versatilis", a device that created the illusion of motion within a stable scene without visible stagehands. Curtains placed between the stage and the audience were drawn open to reveal each scene. Actors were positioned throughout the entire theatre space, placed below the stage or elevated on raised platforms. Jones also experimented with light itself, using coloured glasses, screens, and oiled paper to produce a softer, more controlled illumination.
The collaboration with the poet and playwright Ben Jonson lasted fifteen years and generated some of the most celebrated masques of the Jacobean court. It also generated a prolonged quarrel. Jones argued that masques were, in his own words, "nothing but pictures with light and motion", relegating the spoken word to a secondary role. Jonson disagreed furiously, insisting that the written word was primary. Jonson ridiculed Jones across a series of published works written over two decades, and the competition between them never fully resolved.
More than 450 drawings for costumes and scenery survive, tracing Jones's development from his early work to the mature Italian-influenced style he derived in part from the work of Alfonso and Giulio Parigi. Those drawings would eventually influence practitioners working on the public stage beyond the royal court, who carried Jones's innovations to far wider audiences.
In September 1615, Jones was appointed Surveyor-General of the King's Works, a role that gave him the authority and the royal budgets to build at serious scale. Both James I and Charles I spent generously on their buildings, a sharp contrast to the economical habits of Elizabeth I.
Work on the Queen's House at Greenwich began in 1616, commissioned for James I's wife, Anne. Construction halted abruptly when Anne died in 1619 with only the foundations and first storey complete. The project resumed in 1629 for Charles I's queen, Henrietta Maria, and was finished in 1635 as the first strictly classical building in England, drawing directly on the ideas of Palladio and ancient Rome. It remains Jones's earliest surviving work.
Between 1619 and 1622, the Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall took shape, its design derived from buildings by Scamozzi and Palladio. A ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens was added to it several years later. Jones worked on Whitehall, as on several other projects, alongside his personal assistant and nephew by marriage, John Webb.
The Queen's Chapel at St James's Palace was built between 1623 and 1627, designed initially for Charles I's proposed Spanish bride, the Roman Catholic Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, and then repurposed for Charles I's actual wife, Henrietta Maria of France. Parts of its design drew from the Pantheon of ancient Rome.
For the Earl of Bedford, Jones laid out Covent Garden square on the model of the Italian piazza of Livorno. It became the first regularly planned square in London. When the Earl said he wanted a church that cost as little as a barn, Jones reportedly replied that his lordship would have "the finest barn in Europe". The resulting St Paul's, Covent Garden, was the first wholly classical church built in England, faithfully following Vitruvius's design for a Tuscan temple. Fire gutted its interior in 1795, but the exterior largely survives as Jones designed it.
Between 1634 and 1642, Jones tackled the dilapidated Gothic fabric of Old St Paul's Cathedral, casing the structure in classical masonry and completely rebuilding the west front with a giant Corinthian portico, the largest of its type north of the Alps. The building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 before its transformation could be fully appreciated.
On the 16th of February 1621, Jones won election to Parliament in a by-election for New Shoreham in West Sussex, a borough seat controlled by his patron the Earl of Arundel. He sat until the dissolution of that parliament in February 1622.
The work he undertook as an MP was practical and architectural in character. He was placed on a committee to improve lighting and seating in the House of Commons chamber, which resulted in a new gallery being erected in St Stephen's Chapel during the summer recess of 1621. He was also responsible for a new ceiling in the House of Lords chamber in 1623.
Beyond Parliament, Jones served as a Justice of the Peace for the county of Middlesex and the borough of Westminster from 1630 until at least 1640. He was made a freeman of Southampton in 1623. Charles I offered him a knighthood in 1633, and Jones declined it.
The English Civil War ended Jones's active career as Surveyor. The outbreak of hostilities in 1642 and the seizure of royal houses in 1643 left him without patronage or purpose. In October 1645, Cromwell's forces captured him at the third siege of Basing House, one of the last great strongholds held by the Cavaliers. The mansion inside was destroyed by Cromwell's army; even the walls were broken apart.
His property was returned to him around 1646. He lived out his remaining years at Somerset House, unmarried. He was not entirely idle: he visited the proposed site of Coleshill House in Berkshire with the young architect Roger Pratt, helping to fix a new location for the mansion and leaving Pratt to execute the design.
Jones died on the 21st of June 1652 and was buried with his parents at St Benet's, Paul's Wharf, the Welsh church of the City of London. A monument to him inside the church, depicting St Paul's Cathedral and other buildings he had designed, was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, the same fire that consumed his remodelled St Paul's. John Denham succeeded him as King's Surveyor, and then Christopher Wren, who would rebuild the city Jones had so carefully reshaped.
Architecture historian John Summerson noted that the modern concept of an architect's artistic responsibility for a building did not exist in Jones's time. More than a thousand buildings have been attributed to him, but only a small number can be confirmed as his work with certainty. His role in many cases was that of a senior official directing others rather than a hands-on designer; his contribution might be verbal instructions to a mason, a couple of Italian engravings offered as a guide, or the correction of a draft.
The buildings that are unquestionably his established a vocabulary that reshaped British design for the following two centuries. His design of the double cube room at Wilton House in Wiltshire became a foundational reference for other architects. Lord Burlington and William Kent, both major figures of 18th-century architecture, drew directly on his example. The design principles Jones developed for London townhouses, including the rusticated ground floor with giant pilasters above, as seen at Lindsey House in Lincoln's Inn Fields, built in 1640, were later taken up by John Nash in his Regent's Park terraces and spread to cities including Bath, where they shaped the Royal Crescent.
A bridge built in Llanrwst, North Wales in 1636, named Pont Fawr, is known locally as Pont Inigo Jones. A road in Charlton in southeast London bears his name near Charlton House, some of whose features are attributed to him. The Masonic document known as the Inigo Jones Manuscript, dated to around 1607, has also been linked to his name. These scattered memorials, modest and local as most of them are, mark the outer edge of an influence that ran through nearly every significant British building of the two centuries that followed his death.
Common questions
Who was Inigo Jones and why is he important to English architecture?
Inigo Jones, born on the 15th of July 1573 in Smithfield, London, was the first significant architect in England in the early modern era. He was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to England, and he is regarded as the father of British architecture.
What buildings did Inigo Jones design in London?
Jones designed the Queen's House at Greenwich, completed in 1635 as the first strictly classical building in England; the Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall, built between 1619 and 1622; the Queen's Chapel at St James's Palace, built between 1623 and 1627; and the Covent Garden square, including St Paul's, Covent Garden, the first wholly classical church in England.
What did Inigo Jones contribute to English theatre?
Jones is credited with introducing movable scenery and the proscenium arch to English theatre, working under the patronage of Queen Anne of Denmark. Between 1605 and 1640, he staged more than 500 performances and invented techniques including the use of coloured glasses and oiled paper to control stage lighting.
What was the relationship between Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson?
Jones and the playwright Ben Jonson collaborated on masques for approximately fifteen years but had a prolonged rivalry over whether the visual spectacle or the written word was more important in theatre. Jonson ridiculed Jones in a series of published works written over two decades.
What happened to Inigo Jones during the English Civil War?
Jones's career effectively ended when the English Civil War broke out in 1642 and royal houses were seized in 1643. He was captured at the third siege of Basing House in October 1645, and his property was not returned to him until around 1646. He died on the 21st of June 1652.
Who influenced Inigo Jones's architectural style?
Jones was most deeply influenced by the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, whose book I quattro libri dell'architettura he owned in an annotated Italian copy. He also drew on the ancient Roman writer Vitruvius, and on the architects Vincenzo Scamozzi, Alfonso Parigi, and Giulio Parigi.
All sources
29 references cited across the entry
- 1bookInigo Jones: The Architect of KingsVaughan Hart — Yale University Press — 2011
- 2bookThe English HouseJames Chambers — Guild Publishing — 1985
- 5bookThe Annotated Arch: A Crash Course in the History of ArchitectureCarol Strickland et al. — Andrews McMeel Publishing — 2001
- 6bookDesigns by Inigo Jones for masques & plays at court.The Walpole ad Malone societies — 1924
- 7journalJonson vs. Jones in "Prospero's Books"Alexander McKee — 2007
- 8journalThe Language of Looking: Making Senses Speak in Jonsonian MasqueAmy Rodgers — 2014
- 9bookInigo Jones.A life of the architect;Peter Cunningham — London — 1848
- 10bookSeventeenth-century Art and ArchitectureAnn Sutherland Harris — Laurence King Publishing — 2005
- 11bookImages of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485–1649David Howarth — University of California Press — 1997
- 12webQueen's ChapelHistoric England
- 13webSurvey of London: volume 36 – Covent Gardenbritish-history.ac.uk
- 14bookArchitecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830John Summers on et al. — Yale University Press — 1993
- 15bookLondon: The Unique CitySteen Eiler Rasmussen — MIT Press — 1988
- 16bookLondon: An Architectural HistoryAnthony Sutcliffe — Yale University Press — 12 May 2006
- 17bookAn outline of European architectureNikolaus Pevsner — Penguin Books — 1970
- 18bookArchitecture of England, Scotland, and WalesNigel R. Jones — Greenwood Publishing Group — 2005
- 19bookGeorgian LondonJohn Summerson — Penguin Books — 1945
- 20bookHidden Treasures of LondonMichael McNay — Penguin Random House — 2015
- 21bookThe Golden Age Restor'd: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603–42Graham Parry — Manchester University Press — 1981
- 24bookA short History of Renaissance Architecture in England 1500–1800Reginald Blomfield — BoD – Books on Demand — 2017
- 25citationArchaeology of destruction: a reinterpretation of castle slightings in the English Civil WarLila Rakoczy — University of York (PhD thesis) — 2007
- 26inline.
- 29bookCathedrals Under Siege: Cathedrals in English Society, 1600–1700Standford E. Lehrberg — Penn State University Press