Quick viewing(Text Mode)

“Our Great Architect”: Inigo Jones in the 1830S – a Forgotten Source for the English Italianate?’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol

David McKinstry, ‘“Our Great Architect”: in the 1830s – a forgotten source for the English Italianate?’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xxI, 2013, pp. 166–180

text © the authors 2013 ‘OUR GREAT ARCHITECT’: INIGO JONES IN THE  s – A FORGOTTEN SOURCE FOR THE ENGLISH ITALIANATE?

DAVID MCKINSTRY

The palazzo architecture which became so marked a palazzo architecture it creates the false impression feature of the nineteenth-century English street scene that the highly complex work of Barry and the has traditionally been seen as the result of architects of pioneering ‘palazzo architects’ of the  s and  s the  s and  s reproducing and reinterpreting was akin to a souvenir architecture, gathered abroad the architecture of and upon their and replicated in . return to England. Yet an examination of the work of The reality was that the palazzo style emerged Sir , and Sir only partly from an interest in the architecture of the , three architects who helped establish Italian . The earliest nineteenth-century palazzo architecture in England, reveals a desire to palazzo formulas were worked out by Soane, build on what they perceived as a national tradition. Cockerell and Barry, and each architect looked to an The actual and supposed architecture of Inigo Jones English tradition as much as to original Florentine was upheld as the legitimising prototype for this and Roman examples. In particular they turned to experimentation. Inigo Jones, promoting a renewed public interest in his work while rooting the genesis of the nineteenth- ‘The persisting interest in Italian architecture and the century palazzo mode firmly in the established custom of Italian travel led to a new phase in English traditions of seventeenth- and early eighteenth- architecture at about the end of the  ’s. Rome and Florence, where most architects had studied, were century English architecture. Far from importing a particularly rich in fine Renaissance palazzi, and more ‘new’ form of architecture from Italy the work of these than one traveller had expressed his admiration for three architects demonstrates that the  s marked a them. Charles Barry, who made a tour of Italy and the readiness to return to the origins of English classicism. Middle East in  – , was particularly impressed by the Italian palazzi, and in  , in his designs for the Travellers’ Club House, he introduced the Italian palazzo-formula into English street-architecture.’  SIR JOHN SOANE So wrote C.P. Brand in  , confirming the popular When Daniel Asher Alexander, Surveyor to the opinion that Barry had seen the palazzi of Rome and Dock Company, undertook repairs and Florence, returned to London and repeated Italian alterations to the Queen’s House in and Renaissance formulas in his London club houses to Coleshill House, , in  and  and private houses for the rest of his career. This respectively, public praise was conferred on ‘the supposition is of course partly based on fact, but if finely conservative’ spirit of his work. The speaker understood as the only source for nineteenth-century was Sir John Soane, speaking from the Chair of the

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Fig. . Watercolour showing the Duke Street view of the new State Paper Office, St James’s Park, by J. Richardson,  . ( © Trustees of the )

Royal Academy.  The Queen’s House was started in emulated in entirely new buildings, usually those  by Inigo Jones for Queen , but following the palazzo mode introduced to England finished in  for Queen . Wings in the late  s and throughout the  s. Soane were added later when it became a school for naval was an originator of this mode, not only in theory families’ children in the late eighteenth century, and but also in practice, through one building which, Alexander added flanking blocks and colonnades for despite its  -year lifespan, would form a significant the Royal Naval Asylum, at the same time repairing example of the nineteenth century palazzo model in Jones’s existing fabric.  His work at Coleshill, at that England (Fig. ). time believed to be entirely the work of Inigo Jones, The history of Sir John Soane’s astylar State consisted of ‘repairs’ (in this case the word appears Paper Office (designed  – , executed  – ) to have signified maintenance repairs, rather than has been thoroughly dealt with in recent years by the significant remodelling). Archivist of the Sir John Soane Museum, Susan That Soane should have praised conservatism in Palmer.  In her paper on the New State Paper Office, the handling of Jonesian architecture was by no she rightly notes an Italian influence in the building: means typical of the period. Yet by the mid ‘The seventy-six-year-old architect took his nineteenth century the architecture of Jones was inspiration from Vignola’s Farnese at Caprarola valued not only for its own sake, but actively and came up with a completely astylar building.’ 

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Dorothy Stroud also observed that the design Soane’s mind when undertaking the designs for the appears to be based on the Villa Farnese: New State Paper Office. Soane had been restoring ‘The Source of his inspiration stemmed from the building between  and  , largely by re- Vignola’s Villa Farnese at Caprarola by which he had facing the stonework, opening blocked windows and been greatly impressed when he had visited it as a undertaking major repairs to the roof.  Elements of student some fifty years before, and of which a number Jones’s played a direct role in his  of engravings were in his library.’ composition, most obviously in the prominence It is certainly true that elements of the New State given to the rusticated basement and in the details of Paper Office referred to features of Vignola’s Villa the some of the window architraves.  Farnese.  The entrance door is clearly derived from It must also be remembered that it was the Vignola’s work, and the elevations to St James’s Park Banqueting House and not his which have a similar rhythm to the Villa Farnese. But the represented one of Soane’s first encounters with overall design is no more solely derived from the Italian Renaissance classicism. In  the Banqueting Villa Farnese than the Pall Mall front of Barry’s House was undergoing repair and by gaining access Travellers’ Club is solely derived from the Palazzo to the scaffolding Soane completed a measured Pandolfini. drawing of Jones’s principal elevation, a drawing What is important in understanding the full which won him the Royal Academy Silver medal and implications of the emergence of a palazzo style at which he would later have copied for use in his this time is the fact that Soane, who had been Royal Academy lectures (Fig. ). Therefore for previously working on the of the Soane the classicism of Inigo Jones was as much a Banqueting House, explicitly stated that the design shaping force in his early experiences with was not simply taken from the Italian as the palazzi of Italy. Indeed when he architecture of Vignola and Palladio but also ‘from later sought examples of astylar architecture with the architecture of … Inigo Jones, Sir C Wren, etc.’.  which to instruct his pupils in how they may, Jones’s Banqueting House was clearly very much on ‘without the aid of sculpture, and costly

Fig. . The Banqueting House, , a measured drawing which gained Soane the Royal Academy Silver Medal in  . ( By Courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum )

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Fig. . The Queen’s Chapel, St James’s , London. (David McKinstry  )

materials, please the eye, and even satisfy the minds is just what it should be; even the chimney shafts of those who possess elegant fancy, classical taste, contribute to the beauty of the building…It must be and sound judgement’, it was the buildings observed that in many modern buildings the roofs and chimney shafts are not considered of so much illustrated in Britannicus which he turned importance in the effect of a composition as they to, not the works of Palladio or Vignola: ‘The formerly were…’  following examples will be sufficient to establish this important truth: the front of General Wade’s house, Stucco, tiled roofs and compositional chimney shafts by Lord Burlington, and the lawn front of Wilton were all elements which were used by Barry in the house, and Lindsey House in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Reform and Travellers’ Clubs and would become the admired work of Inigo Jones.’  Soane considered conspicuous elements of the palazzo lexicon the buildings of the seventeenth and early eighteenth throughout England. They also form elements in century to provide an ideal model for achieving Soane’s own design for the New State Paper Office. successful astylar classicism: ‘In these buildings by Further similarities between the State Paper Office Lord Burlington and Inigo Jones there are no and the work of Inigo Jones can be seen through a prominent features, no richness of materials, yet the comparison of the Queen’s Chapel, St James’s effect is more than satisfactory, whereas on the other Palace, and Soane’s design, where the , hand, if columns are disproportioned…the whole is prominent chimneys, plain plastered string course, uninteresting.’  window treatment and quoins all seem to arise from The qualities which Soane admired in Lindsey a similar aesthetic approach to designing a modest House, at that time believed to be the work of Jones, but important building (Fig. ). would become some of the common characteristics It therefore appears that Soane was not basing of the astylar Renaissance revival in the  s and his design on any one Renaissance building, but was  s: aiming for a synthesis of astylar forms. For example, ‘The latter , with its plastered front, and its Soane made one drawing which further referenced common red tiled roof, forms a certain harmony and the Italian Renaissance beyond Vignola, although it fitness in its parts, commands attention and excites was not incorporated into any subsequent design. pleasurable sensations in the mind of the spectator... This showed a heavily bracketed cornicione with In this work of our great architect, the roof, in quantity, busts sketched in each recess and the following note:

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

‘Query Busts in Cornice If Shields-Trophies/&c are of Works had not commented on, is retained, which admissible in the Metope of the Doric order why not meant the elevation still displayed something of its have busts of illustrious persons whose labours are original character. supposed to be deposited with the Walls of this As seen in the aforementioned letter to the Edifice  May.’  This proposal seems to echo the Chancellor, Soane did not approve of this interference use of the same device in Siena, where the busts of and saw it as damaging his innovative concept. He Popes are set into the clerestory cornice to the nave executed two sheets of drawings showing his astylar of the Duomo and those of Roman emperors appear design, the Office of Works’ requested revised design, in the cornice of the Palazzo Spannocchi. and Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House. Beneath the However, when his astylar design was threatened astylar design he wrote: ‘Part of the exterior of a by compromise, it was to Wren and Jones that Soane design for the new State Paper Office imitated from turned for defence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Architecture of Vignola, Palladio, Inigo Jones, Henry Goulburn, possibly influenced by Henry Sir C. Wren etc. by a professional architect. Bankes, MP, took against the astylar proposal, and Estimated expense of the building £  ,  ‘In the course of an interview with the surveyor fittings.’  Beneath the Office of Works’ preferred general, scribbled on Soane’s drawings his own idea design he wrote: ‘Part of the exterior of the proposed for rows of small set between the windows new State Paper Office according to the dilettanti on the two principal storeys.’ With predictable anger architecture of the present day. Estimated expense of Soane protested to the Surveyor General: this plan £  ,  fittings.’  The drawing of the ‘Let me conjure you my Dear Sir to exert all your Office of Works’ preferred design superimposed over power to prevent the erection of such a of an elevation of the Banqueting House was annotated …from disgracing the Metropolis of the Empire. I as ‘The of Inigo Jones compared trust you will listen to my prayer which is for the cause with the dilettanti architecture of the present day’.  of Architecture and to prevent the reproach of Although Jones’s Banqueting House displayed Foreigners on our National taste’.  two storeys of pilasters in the manner requested of The requested pilasters can still be seen on Soane’s Soane by the Office of Works, the comparison astylar ‘Elevation Next the Park’, drawn in pencil between the vigour of Jones’s design and the over Soane’s proposed design of  June  , compromised nature of the design requested by the together with pencil amendments to the string- Office of Works is clearly intended to reflect course between the ground and first floor widened unfavourably on the latter. This attack was sustained into something equating to an entablature for the in one of Soane’s Royal Academy lecture illustrations lower run of pilasters. Soane’s proposed chimneys which shows his astylar design of the park elevation have also been crossed out, with a note that there in perspective with an inset of the Office of Works’ were to be no chimneys running up between the revised scheme superimposed over the Banqueting windows; they would of course have looked House and the scathing text: ‘An idea for the exterior extremely odd surmounting the top of the requested of the new State Paper Office in imitation of pilasters.  A drawing completed on  June  Whitehall Chapel [the Banqueting House] shows the west elevation with the pilasters added concocted from the suggestions and commands of a and the chimneys removed, turning his astylar committee of taste’.  This is then followed by a proposal into something more akin to a conventional quotation from Cicero’s ‘De Oratore II’, ending Palladian design, rather in the manner of . ‘quod enim ipsi experti non sunt, id docent ceteros’.  However the bracketed cornicione , which the Office Clearly for Soane the ‘imitation’ of the Office of

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Fig. . The façade of Wren’s St Paul’s Deanery, London, drawn by Cockerell in the  s and included in his ‘Ichnographia Publica’. ( © Royal Institute of British Architects )

Works owed nothing to a true understanding of of sketches which he compiled for private use from Jonesian architecture which he considered to about  onwards. These contained many embody ‘lightness with solidity, elegant decoration drawings of the City Churches and of Wren’s major with classical simplicity, and majesty and dignity secular buildings such as would later be seen in with correct taste’.  Cockerell’s ‘Tribute to Sir ’ of c. . However, they also contained more modest examples of seventeenth-century secular buildings, the essence of which would later be expressed in CHARLES ROBERT COCKERELL some of Cockerell’s commercial architecture. His Soane’s use of the Banqueting House to illustrate the elevation of ‘The Entrance Façade of a Building’ inadequacies of the Office of Works’ amended scheme undertaken in the  s shows the Deanery of St is important, since it represented a wider development Paul’s Cathedral. The prominent cornice, bands of amongst architects of the  s. As the Greek Revival rustication, and the way in which the entrance door began to fall from favour, some architects re-examined forms the chief architectural note of the astylar the classicism of the English seventeenth century in façade all point to features which would become part much the same way as others were looking to the of the nineteenth-century palazzo manner (Fig. ). architecture of the Tudor and Elizabethan eras to Similar elements are emphasised in his drawing of provide a basis for a national tradition. Charles Robert Merchant Taylor’s School and many of his drawings Cockerell is one notable example of this, being of seventeenth century churches relate to their interested in both the monumental architecture of , balustrades and ball or urn finials, features Wren and Vanbrugh and the modest astylar buildings which he would experiment with on his preliminary of the seventeenth century. designs for buildings such as the Carlton Club and This sensibility can best be seen in his the Royal Exchange. Likewise many of the sketches comprehensive ‘Ichnographica Publica’ , a collection of entrance archways, doorways and window

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

their work should bear a resemblance to that of nineteenth-century architects following the same route. But it must be remembered that, as with Soane and the Banqueting House, Cockerell developed his knowledge of the palazzo manner not only from original Italian models but from the seventeenth- century classical . In this sense his ‘Ichnographica Publica’ is essentially a Grand Tour sketchbook, with the country visited being the London of Wren and his contemporaries rather than the Italy of Palladio and Vignola. Again, as with Soane, Cockerell was conversant with seventeenth- century English fabric in a working capacity, having acted as Surveyor to St Paul’s Cathedral.

SIR CHARLES BARRY Perhaps the architect most popularly associated with the practice of Renaissance classicism in nineteenth- century England is Charles Barry. His first Italianate Fig. . Part-facade and details of ‘Thomas Tegg’s House’, building in England was the villa he designed for  , . Drawn by Cockerell in Thomas Attree in Queen’s Park, Brighton, designed the  s and included in his ‘Ichnographia Publica. and completed  – . This building was more (© Royal Institute of British Architects ) akin to the genuine work of Palladio on the Veneto than it was to Palladianism as introduced by Inigo Jones, yet within a few years Barry would emulate treatments are typical of the aedicule treatment of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century doorways and windows chosen for later commercial architecture directly rather than following strictly palazzo commissions. Italian models. This can be seen most explicitly in In looking at Cockerell’s sketch of ‘Thomas his extensive work at in  , which he Tegg’s House’ (No.  Cheapside, originally built for remodelled in a manner partly based on the William Sir William Turner, Lord in  ) Winde design of  and more directly on the river it is hard not to see the parallels between the elevation of the Great Gallery of House as richness of a seventeenth-century citizen’s town illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus . Furthermore, house and the similar devices employed in the this direct Jonesian reference was generally known to embellishment of nineteenth century commercial the public. In  , John Marius Wilson’s Imperial and club buildings (Fig. ).  Of course these Gazetteer of England and described Cliveden parallels stem in part from a shared model, that of the thus: ‘The present mansion is after a design by Italian Renaissance palazzo. As seventeenth-century Barry, with a centre in imitation of Inigo Jones’ old architects emulated the domestic ornament and ; and presents an appearance at architecture of northern Italy, it is not surprising that once simple and imposing’. 

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Fig. . The South Façade of , Dorset (known as Kingston Hall until c.  ) as remodelled from  by Charles Barry. The triangular to the central ground floor window/door was altered to a segmental pediment in execution. (© Images )

Barry too became familiar with seventeenth the staircase, possibly intended ‘to look like a century English classicism through working with survivor from the original house’.  That Barry’s original fabric. His immersion in Jonesian classicism emulation of seventeenth century devices was not was largely thanks to , for whom entirely due to the influence of Bankes can be seen he remodelled ’s Kingston Lacy (then by the fact that he had already used Jonesian attributed to Jones) between c. – (Fig. ). prototypes for his staircase in the Travellers’ Club a Originally built in  – the house was a well- few years earlier. Professor David Watkin has noted documented example of Restoration architecture. that this ‘recalls the work of Inigo Jones and his Pevsner disapprovingly notes that ‘What Barry did, seventeenth-century followers, Pratt, May and Webb. no doubt on orders, was at one and the same time to The richly carved woodwork in Wren’s city churches restore the house’s original character (replacing the is recalled by the broad swirling curves of carved balustrade and ) and to take it away again by a leaves in the great triangular panel which typically Victorian and Barryesque heightening of fills the side of the lower flight of the staircase.’  that character.’  But Barry’s work at Kingston Lacy The staircase at Kingston Lacy further exclaimed its was much more than simply an exercise in Jonesian credentials with the addition of a bronze ‘heightening of character’. Directed by the statue of Jones’s patron Charles I, flanked by statues considerable connoisseurship of Bankes, what Barry of William Bankes’s seventeenth century ancestors, effectively achieved was a comprehensive reworking the arch-Royalists Sir John and Lady Bankes. of the Jonesian manner to create a dramatic setting For Bankes, as for so many others of the period, for Bankes’s collection of Italian art. there was no contradiction in remodelling original One of the most sustained pieces of Jonesian work while at the same time referencing the spirit of classicism inside the house is the uppermost flight of the original work being altered. In this sense

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Fig. . South elevation of Trentham Hall, , showing Charles Barry’s new family wing on the right. (Morris’s Seats of Noblemen and Gentleman ,  ) architects of the  s and later followed a tradition dressing room at the north-east corner were both of undertaking alteration as a dialogue with the past. taken from the Queen’s House at Greenwich; the idea Several features at Kingston Lacy point to this of the low entrance hall was confirmed by what he saw at Amesbury Abbey, , and the detail of the sensibility. The windows to the west elevation were loggia on the east front was related to York Stairs in altered under the direction of William Bankes, and London. He went to , Wiltshire, as well replicate Pratt’s original glazing pattern which had as Tregothnan, Cornwall, the core of which was been lost in the eighteenth century. The cupola was contemporary with Kingston Lacy, and he made a reinstated, having been removed in the  s. The special journey to Lees Court in Kent, where he found interiors were remodelled significantly, but the the design of the drawing-room ceiling. He only knew Coleshill from prints, but he sent Barry to look at it.’  sources for their remodelling were original designs by Jones and Webb. John Cornforth notes: One of the decorative elements of the house refers to ‘William Bankes’s discussions with himself about the the Pratt original in a literal sense. This is a Lorandini house, carried on in his notebook and by later letters, stove in one of the corridors. Constructed of Carrara are almost overwhelming in their detail, but what is marble, it contains a Marochetti bronze medallion impressive about them is his research on English supposedly based on the work of Jean Goujon at the architecture in order to get details correct, and his Carnavalet, . This medallion depicts two creative memory for what he had seen in and Italy. Not unreasonably, he associated the original putti supporting the Bankes coat of arms. The designs for the house with Inigo Jones; so he studied sinister putto holds a depiction of Kingston Hall in buildings by Jones and Webb, copying details from its original state and the dexter putto holds a copy of them or getting confirmation for his own ideas from Pratt’s plan for the principal floor.  This slightly them. Thus the South Terrace and the ceiling of the startling fusion embodies the major sources for the

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Fig. . South Elevation of Bridgewater House as executed by Charles Barry. (RIBA Library Drawings & Archives Collections )

English Italianate of the nineteenth century: modern was the work of Inigo Jones more than original technology, replicated sixteenth-century Renaissance Italian models which gave Barry the assurance to decoration, and what was believed to be the revive Renaissance forms which had been seen as architecture of Inigo Jones. illiterate by the English architects of his boyhood: The Bankes-Barry collaboration formed part of ‘Two of Bramante’s at Rome, the Cancelleria Barry’s architectural education. Like Cockerell, he had and the Palazzo dei Rei d’Inghilterra, at first pleased returned from Italy and found his attention directed to him much by their general character of solidity and the study of classicism as seen by seventeenth-century breadth... But his great objection was to the use of English architects. This immersion in the work of two orders, even when they were in low , and when the unity of the height was preserved by the Jones, Webb et al was to inform his treatment of importance of the upper cornice. The best examples of classical buildings as much as his study of the North Italy could not reconcile him to this ‘ piling of buildings on Florence and Rome. Barry’s son was house upon house.’ In later days the beauties of the later to note the strength of the Jonesian influence on Banqueting-house at Whitehall so prevailed with him, his father’s classicism, showing how the architect that he frequently used order upon order in his own designs…But at Rome this expedient would have frequently turned to Jones for legitimisation of the use shocked him as barbarous.’  of certain classical forms. The new wing to Trentham (Fig. ), designed in  , was derived from both Therefore it was Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House Italian and Jonesian sources: ‘A Palazzino in itself, which reconciled Barry to one of the most with an engaged order, not altogether unlike his conspicuous devices in Renaissance architecture, a favourite Banqueting-house at Whitehall’.  conviction that was not given by observing ‘the best Indeed, according to Barry’s account it examples of North Italy’.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

The work of Jones appears to have achieved a By the  s it was not just practising architects but similar effect in changing Barry’s attitude to also architectural critics who began to examine the rustication; rusticated quoins and columns would life and work of Inigo Jones as a means of later feature prominently in his work at Bridgewater understanding, and often legitimising, the place of House, the porch of which uses very similar columns Roman and Italian classicism within the national to the York Water Gate (Fig. ): cultural and architectural canon. This renewed interest in Jones’s biographical details ran parallel to ‘To rustic work he had at first a great aversion. In substruction it might be tolerated, but elsewhere its the antiquarian interest in English cultural figures of employment seemed to him indefensible, and a the ‘Olden Time’, his contemporaries Jonson and rusticated monstrous. His admiration for Shakespeare being two such examples.  Sanmicheli’s works, especially that at Lido, first shook his determination; at home his delight in the work of Inigo Jones carried on the process of conversion ; and he himself afterwards used what at this time [his time ALLAN CUNNINGHAM : JONES AND in Italy] he would have proscribed.’  THE NATIONAL NARRATIVE In remodelling the Board of Trade in Whitehall, The later interest in Jones as a designer of , opposite Jones’s Banqueting House, Barry once and as a figure connected to English literature, grew again found legitimate precedent in Jones for the use from the reassessment of his architectural work in of a device which he was not instinctively drawn to: the  s by antiquarians and critics. In  the poet ‘The question next arose, whether the entablature and biographer Allan Cunningham published the should be broken or not. Barry’s objection to engaged ‘Architects’ volume of his series on the Lives of columns has already been mentioned. Here, however, Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects . such an arrangement was forced upon him, and the Palladian architects feature considerably, the full list question was, how the impropriety could be best of British architects comprising William of Wykeham , alleviated. He had begun to think of breaking entablatures (which in days of classical purism would Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John have shocked him), partly from the example of Inigo Vanbrugh, , , the Earl of Jones’s Banqueting-house, partly from his Gothic Burlington and Sir William Chambers. The chapter studies, and the tendency to vertical lines which they on Jones is interesting in its attempts to establish him  fostered.’ as part of a national architectural narrative and a Even when considering his competition entry for the starting point for the Palladian classicism which new Palace of , which had specified an would become the uniting theme in Cunningham’s Elizabethan or Gothic design, Barry had the work of pageant of English taste. Inigo Jones in mind: What Cunningham attempts to achieve through ‘But, if he could have had a site to his mind, and had his account of Jones is legitimisation of the use of been left free to choose his style, there is little doubt in England by claiming it as an that he would have preferred Italian. The example organic and logical national style. Cunningham most frequent in his thoughts was Inigo Jones’ grand informs the reader that: design for the Palace at Whitehall; his own general ideas were manifested in the great design for the New ‘The stately had fallen into discredit Public Offices, which was the last important work of from the era of the Reformation; it was looked upon as his life. He actually prepared some sketches and a thing polluted by the superstitions of Rome — and studies for an Italian design, in defiance of the was moreover too costly for a church which had been instructions to the competitors.’  much impoverished as well as purified. The Tudor

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Architecture, (as it is usually called,) which had been The desire for ‘splendidness’, ‘massiveness’ and gradually becoming predominant in England, has been ‘stability’ in public edifices which was emerging in regarded as the illegitimate offspring of the Grecian the  s complemented the increasing use of and Gothic, and it certainly has a little of either character; inferior in elegance to the one, and in Renaissance forms, or a synthesis of those forms magnificence to the other, but more than uniting the with Grecian and Roman models and saw Italianism, domestic accommodations of both.’  as developed by Barry and Cockerell, become a Cunningham avoids making Jones the sole advocate of favoured manner of achieving these effects in clubs, classical taste in England, possibly because it is difficult banks and commercial architecture generally. to explain how an architect at the Stuart Court can be As the Greek Revival was increasingly questioned seen as replacing Gothic architecture ‘polluted by the as a tenable solution to modern architectural Superstitions of Rome’ with something more requirements, the evocation of Inigo Jones provided appropriate to post-Reformation England. Instead he an English tradition which could be returned to in understands Jones within what he sees as a continuing an attempt to resume an organic national classicism classical trend in English architectural history: free from the strictures of exactingly ‘From the time of the decline of the Gothic, our archaeological forms which had been prevalent in acquaintance had commenced with the pure models of the earlier part of the nineteenth century: and Rome; the diffusion of learning, consequent on the discovery of printing; the visits which many of ‘The genius of Inigo, however, loved less the simple our noblemen paid to Italy — and the encouragement majesty of the Grecian school than the picturesque extended to Italian architects by Henry the Eighth, — splendours of Palladio: and it must be confessed, that all conducted to render classic designs popular. But for domestic purposes, at least, the varied combinations the Reformation only took place in part…our sturdy which the revival of architecture in Italy permitted, are English prejudices made us cling to our old style, and far more suitable to us than the severer simplicity of the innovators were glad to compound by mingling . The columns, rank over rank, the recesses, the Grecian with Gothic, and both with the grotesque arcades, the multiplied entablatures, the balustrades, designs of the Tudors.’  and tower above tower, of the , must not be looked upon as the innovations of men Where Jones was most useful in Cunningham’s who went a devious way without a purpose: these conception of the architectural narrative of England changes were in truth conceded in obedience to the was in providing a national and historical legitimacy calls of climate, of customs, of religion and of society, for the synthetic classicism which was so popular and were Pericles raised from the dead, he could not but acknowledge that windows are useful for light, and towards the end of the , and which was chimneys necessary for heat in Britain.’  to develop into the Italian Renaissance models of the mid nineteenth century. Cunningham reports that Cunningham clearly considered that the architecture finding no appetite for pure classicism upon his of Jones could provide a model, or at least a starting- return to England: point, for formulating a practical contemporary ‘Inigo compounded, and for some time persevered in, version of Palladianism, lamenting that: what the wits of the succeeding age nicknamed “King ‘There is no complete architectural collection of the James’s Gothic.”... He desired to exhibit something designs of this eminent architect; but this is a reproach striking and new; and it must be acknowledged by all which it is in vain to reiterate. Such an undertaking who will look at some of these structures, dismissing would ruin a private individual; and a country which all preconceived notions of architecture from their has a spirit for so many things, has thus yet shown minds, that they are splendid and massive, and present little for the preservation of its architecture, either an image of stability, which too few of our public Grecian or Gothic.’  edifices possess.’ 

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

JONES REDUX Despite the lack of a complete collection of the work of Jones, the seeds of Jonesian classicism had been regenerated. In the  s John Goldicutt published an illustrated pamphlet entitled ‘Heriots’ Hospital . The design of the celebrated architect, Inigo Jones’  . This work brought what were then supposed to be Jonesian interiors to the public attention. The first plate was a medallion portrait of Jones (Fig. ). Goldicutt had composed this from a mixture of sources and what it shows is a profile portrait of Inigo Jones taken from a cameo in Fig. . Cameo of Inigo Jones from Goldicutt’s Heriot’s possession of the Hospital, framed by a section of the Hospital ,  . “The bvst drawn from a small cameo in carved foliage over the chimneypiece in the Council possession of the hospl ‘ with ‘Specimen of carved foliage room, surrounded by foliate decoration ‘after Jones’. selected from the chimney piece in the council room’ by A similar, if even more laudatory, tribute can be John Goldicutt Archt. ( © Trustees of the British Museum ) seen in the work of  -year-old John Turner. In  he completed a measured drawing of the York Water Gate showing its plan, sections and elevations. He ornamented the drawing with a Baroque cartouche framing a bust of Inigo Jones being crowned with laurels by two cherubs (Fig.  ). The result of

Fig.  . Measured drawings of the York Water Gate, London with portrait bust of Inigo Jones. John Turner,  . ( © Royal Institute of British Architects )

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

Fig.  . ‘A composition from the works of Inigo Jones’, , exhibited at the Royal Academy in  . (© Royal Institute of British Architects )

Jonesian re-evaluation of the  s and  s meant ‘A Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren’ (  ). Unlike that by the end of the  s Inigo Jones was becoming Cockerell, Tite included buildings which he must firmly established in the British art-historical canon. have known post-dated Jones’s life by many decades. In  the Art-Union of London offered new It is the spirit of Jonesian architecture which Tite members silver or bronze medals carved by Charles was seeking to encapsulate rather than his personal Frederick Carter.  It carried a profile of Inigo Jones opus. The Tite drawing is highly revealing of mid on one side and the main elevation of the Banqueting nineteenth-century attitudes to Jones, and, House on the other. Other medals in the series significantly, contains Welsh and Scottish buildings included Sir Francis Chantrey, , alongside English. What had originated as a Sir John Vanbrugh and John Flaxman. biographical interest in Jones was being expanded Consequently, Jonesian hagiography would into a Jonesian ‘School’ of British architecture which develop steadily into the mid nineteenth century, was seen as continuing to thrive and develop even reaching its apotheosis in Sir William Tite’s after the death of its instigator, and to which mid ‘Composition of the Works of Inigo Jones’ (Fig.  ) of nineteenth-century architects could hope to become  , which followed in the tradition of Cockerell’s the legitimate heirs.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI  ‘ OUR GREAT ARCHITECT ’: INIGO JONES IN THE  S

NOTES  One imagines that, as with his choice of  C.P. Brand, Italy and the English Romantics . architecture, Turner’s politics would have been (,  ), p. . looked on approvingly by many of Cockerell and  Quoted by Annette Peach, ‘Alexander, Daniel Asher Barry’s clients of the  s. He was a loyal ( – )’, Oxford Dictionary of National Monarchist yet pro-conventicle, a Tory yet a self- Biography . (Oxford,  ). made merchant with no landed ambitions, greatly  Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of devoted to charitable causes in the City, and a British Architects,  – (th ed., New Haven successful civil servant. and London,  ), pp.  –.  John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England  Susan Palmer, ‘Sir John Soane and the Design of and Wales (London and Edinburgh,  – ), the New State Paper Office,  – ’ (Paper p. . presented at ‘Archivaria  : First International  John Newman and , Buildings of Conference on the History of Records and Archives ’ England; Dorset . (Harmondsworth,  ) p. . at the Association of Canadian Archivists, Ottowa,  John Cornforth, ‘Kingston Lacy Revisited- IV’, Spring  ). Country Life , June  ,  , p. .  Ibid ., pp.  –.  David Watkin, ‘The Travellers’ Club and the Grand  Dorothy Stroud, Sir John Soane , Architect Tour, Correcting Raphael…’ The British Art (London,  ), p. . Journa l, I (I) (Autumn  , p. .  Sir John Soane Museum, London,  // : ‘This  Ibid ., p. . door &c is in its proportions like Vignola’s book’ (r).  National Trust Collections, Kingston Lacy, Dorset,  Sir John Soane Museum, London, annotation to  .. drawing ‘Contrasted Designs: design No ’ for the  Rev. , The Life and Works of Sir Charles New State Paper Office,  // (r). Barry, R.A., F.R.S.,&c., &c . (London,  ) p. .  J. Mordaunt Crook and M.H. Port, The History of  Ibid ., p. . the King’s Works VI, (London,  ), pp.  –.  Ibid ., p. .  Ibid ., p. .  Ibid ., p. .  Sir John Soane, ‘Royal Academy Lecture VI’,  Ibid ., p. . reproduced in David Watkin, Sir John Soane,  Peter Cunningham, Inigo Jones: A Life of the Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Architect, Remarks on some of his Sketches for Lectures (Cambridge,  ), p. . Masques and Dramas by J.R. Planch é Esq., and  Ibid . Five Court Masques; Edited from the Original MSS.  Ibid . of , John Maston, etc. By J. Payne Collier,  Sir John Soane Museum, London,  // (r) [Note: Esq., Accompanied by facsimiles of Drawings by the drawing is dated at the bottom rd May  , so Inigo Jones; and by a portrait from a painting by this comment was presumably added three days later]. Vandyck . (London  ).  Soane Museum Correspondence Div. XI K ( ) (r).  Alan Cunningham, Lives of Eminent British  Sir John Soane Museum, London,  / /, (r). Painters, Sculptors, and Architects , IV . (London,  Ibid .  ) p. .  Ibid .  Ibid ., p. .  Ibid .  Ibid ., p. .  Sir John Soane Museum, London,  //, (r).  Ibid ., p. .  Ibid . [‘They instruct the rest as to what they  Ibid ., p. . themselves are not expert in’] (r).  John Goldicutt, Heriots’ Hospital Edinburgh.  Sir John Soane, ‘Royal Academy Lecture V’, The design of the celebrated architect, Inigo Jones. reproduced in Watkin, op. cit. , p. . (London,  ).  Also of interest is his ‘Ichnographica Domestica’,  The Art Union of London was established in  largely concerning private houses, with reference to ‘to aid in extending the Love of the Arts of Design work he believed to be by Jones, such as Amesbury within the , and to give Abbey, Wiltshire: , ‘Cockerell’s Encouragement to Artists, beyond that afforded by Ichnographica Domestica’, Architectural History ,  the patronage of individuals.’: Peter Cunningham, ( ), pp. – and  – (plates). Hand-Book of London (London,  ), p.  .

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI 

Top View