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 to converse 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 record of 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 ye 20 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.