Palladian
It is vitally important, when considering the place of Inigo Jones within the overall history of English architecture, to recognise how prescient he was in chronological terms. As the renowned architectural historian John Summerson observed, ‘Inigo Jones was … thirty when Elizabeth died. He was only nine years younger than Shakespeare and the very near contemporary of all those lesser poets and dramatists whom we habitually call Elizabethan’
Frustratingly little is known about Jones’s background and early life. It is known that he was born in London in 1573, to a relatively humble mercantile background (his father was a cloth worker). By whatever means, he seems to have made early progress up the social scale: by 1603 he is mentioned as having received payment for his professional services as a ‘picture maker’ (stage-set designer) from the earl of Rutland. He also travelled in Europe at about this time (presumably as part of the earl’s entourage). It is also known that he came to early prominence as a stage designer for the numerous lavish court ‘masques’ which were such a feature of Jacobean society (he appears to have collaborated with Ben Jonson, and it has been claimed that his stage designs may have influenced some of Shakespeare’s dramatic imagery).
This background appears to have had two marked and significant effects on Jones’s professional abilities: first, he was able to experience Italian architecture (both classical and Renaissance) at first hand – this at a time when most Englishmen could only learn about such architecture by means of (often inaccurate) imported engravings and prints. Second, as a stage designer, Jones learnt to draw.
Summerson emphasises the importance of this latter point from the perspective of Jones’s later practice as an architect:
Jones’s very considerable capacity as a draughtsman at once marks him off from all his English contemporaries … It is not simply the ability to draw which is significant, but the state of mind, the sense of control of which that ability is the outward sign. It represents, indeed, a revolution in architectural vision, and when we meet with Inigo Jones’s earliest surviving sketches … we know that we have finally crossed the threshold from the medieval to the modern.
A tantalising glimpse into Jones’s practical technique of study whilst on his European travels is to be found in a surviving copy of Palladio’s Quattro Libri, which Jones took with him on his travels, and which is preserved at Worcester College, Oxford. This volume is filled with copious notes in Jones’s own hand, which seem to indicate that his technique was to take his copy of Palladio to the actual classical remains which Palladio analysed – and there to make meticulous comparisons between text and building, so as to gain an even greater insight into the methods and styles of the classical builders themselves. As Summerson points out, ‘It is more than doubtful if any Englishman had attempted this method of study before, or paid any really close attention to antique buildings or antique sculpture’ (Summerson, p. 114).
