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Inigo Jones, John Webb and Temple Bar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

John Peacock  and
Christy Anderson
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Extract

Among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Library is a document in the hand of John Webb, headed ‘Notes of Practise uppon the Gate at Temple barr. 1638’. It refers to a design commissioned from Inigo Jones in 1636, never built, on which Webb also worked. Several drawings by Jones and Webb survive, and the ‘Notes’ complement them and fill out our knowledge of the commission. A transcript of the document (noticed since the nineteenth century but unpublished) is offered here, with an introductory discussion of Jones’s idea for rebuilding Temple Bar as a triumphal arch (Fig. 1).

Type
Section 3: Drawings and Designs
Information
Architectural History , Volume 44 , 2001 , pp. 29 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

1 Harl. MS 6839, f. 146r.

2 Harris, John and Higgott, Gordon, Inigo Jones. Complete Architectural Drawings (London, 1989), pp. 251-53, nos 82-83, figs 84-85Google Scholar.

3 Noble, T.C., Memorials of Temple Bar (London, 1869), p. 25 Google Scholar; Colvin, Howard, ‘Pompous Entries and English Architecture’, Essays in English Architectural History (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 79, 93 n. 28Google Scholar.

4 City of London Records, Repertories 50, fol. 199, quoted Noble (see n. 3 above), p. 29.

5 A Survey Of the Cities of London and Westminster . . . Written at first in the Year MDXCVIII. By John Stow . . . Corrected, Improved, and very much Enlarged . . . by John Strype, 2 vols (London, 1720), 1, III.278.

6 See the following plans, as catalogued in Howgego, James, Printed Maps of London c.1553-1850, 2nd edn (London, 1978): no. 2 Google Scholar, Frans Hogenberg (for G. Braun and F. Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572), reprod. Barger, Felix and Jackson, Peter, The History ofLondon in Maps (London, 1990),pp. 12–13 Google Scholar; no. 8, Ralph Agas (attributed; 1570s?), reprod. Mitton, G. E., Maps of Old London (London, 1908), pp. 8–11 Google Scholar; no. 5, Pieter van den Keere (for Norden, John, Speculum Britanniae, the first parte, London, 1593 Google Scholar) reprod. Hind, A. M., Engraving in England in the Sixteenth ana Seventeenth Centuries, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1952), pl. 115 Google Scholar; no. 9, Cornells Danckerts (c. 1633), reprod. Glanville, Philippa, London in Maps (London, 1972)Google Scholar; no. 12, Richard Newcourt and William Faithorne (1658), reprod. Mitton, op. cit., pp. 16-17; no. 21, Hollar, Wenceslas (for An Exact Surveigh Of The Streets And Churches Contained Within The Ruines Of The City of London . . . 1666, London, 1667)Google Scholar, reprod. Hind, A. M., Wenceslaus Hollar and his Views of London and Windsor in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1922), pls XII–XIII Google Scholar.

7 For the main archway see the plans of van den Keere and Danckerts (see n. 6 above), and the engraving after a lost painting of Edward VI’s coronation procession in 1547, reprod. Keene, Derek, Cheapside before the Great Fire (London, 1985), pp. 10–11 Google Scholar. A subsidiary passage is indicated in this engraving, and in van den Keere. For the gates, see City of London Records, Repertories 13, part 1, fol. 170, quoted Noble (see n. 3 above), p. 22.

8 Quoted Noble (see n. 3 above), p. 30. Repeated references to ‘the gate’ at Temple Bar occur in descriptions of royal entries, e. g. Nichols, John, The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols (London, 1823), 1, p. 55 Google Scholar.

9 Ibid.; Nichols, John Gough, Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth, 2 vols (London, 1857), 1, p. ccxci Google Scholar.

10 Ibid.; The King’s Entertainment in Herford, C. H. and Percy, & Simpson, Evelyn (eds), Ben Jonson, 11 vols (Oxford, 1925-52), VII, pp. 95–105 Google Scholar, plate between pp. 94 & 95.

11 Harrison, Stephen, The Arch’s of Triumph Erected in honor of. . .James . . . King, of England (London, 1604)Google Scholar.

12 Herford and Simpson (see n. 10 above), pp. 90-91.

13 Alberti, Leon Battista, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Rykwert, J. et al. (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1988), pp. 302–03Google Scholar (IX.5). Johnson, A. W., Ben Jonson. Poetry and Architecture (Oxford, 1994), pp. 47–48 Google Scholar.

14 Alberti (see n. 13 above), pp. 265-68 (VIII.6), p. 402 n. 98.

15 Ibid., p. 267.

16 L’ architettura di Leon Battista Alberti tradotta in lingua fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli (Venice, 1565), p. 292, 11. 27-30 (Jones possessed this translation, in the Monreale edition of 1565). Alberti’s formula for the proportioning of the attic is also followed (albeit not in every detail): ibid., p. 293, 11. 8-10, and cf. Alberti (see n. 13 above), p. 266.

17 Note in Jones’s copy of Palladio, Andrea, I Quattro Libri Dell’Architettura (Venice, 1601), IV.61 Google Scholar: see Allsopp, Bruce (ed.), Inigo Jones on Palladio, 2 vols (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1970), 1, p. 55 Google Scholar.

18 Serlio, Sebastiano, Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura, Et Prospetiva (Venice, 1619 Google Scholar; facsimile Ridgewood, N.J., 1964), III.99V.

19 Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, ed. Milanesi, Gaetano, 9 vols (Florence, 1906), 1, p. 224 Google Scholar.

20 Harris and Higgott (see n. 2 above), p. 251.

21 Millar, Oliver (ed.), ‘Abraham van der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles I’, Walpole Society, XXXVII (Glasgow, 1960), pp. 124-25Google Scholar, for books ‘Concerning Antiquity of Meddalls’, and pp. 129-44 for apartial inventory of medals.

22 I Discorsi Del S. Don Antonio Agostini Sopra Le Medaglie Et Altre Anticaglie Divisi In. XI. Dialoghi (Rome, 1592), pp. 39–40 and pis 46-48 (Laetitia and Hilaritas), pp. 18-20 and pls 12–14 (Pietas), pp. 23–24 and pls 23-24 (Pax). Webb’s two figures appear to be copied from the same medal of Hadrian with Hilaritas on the reverse (fourth medal on plate 47). For Agustín see Cunnally, John, Images of the Illustrious. The Numismatic Presence in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1999), pp. 186-87Google Scholar.

23 See e. g. Dosio, G. A., Urbis Romae aedificiorum . . . reliquiae (Rome, 1569), pl. 30 Google Scholar, and Bober, Phyllis Pray and Rubenstein, Ruth, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture (London, 1986), pp. 214–16Google Scholar, pls 182b, 182d.

24 Lafreri, Antonio, Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (Rome, n. d.)Google Scholar, British Library, C.77.i.11 (Charles I’s copy with his monogram stamped on the cover), reconstruction of the Arch of Titus, signed ‘Ant. Lafreri. Sequanus. Excud. Romae. MDXLVIII’.

25 Eisenthal, Esther, ‘John Webb’s Reconstruction of the Ancient House’, Architectural History, 28 (1985), pp. 7–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 12).

26 This paragraph owes much to suggestions by Gordon Higgott, to whom we are very grateful. The ‘Notes’ are in Webb’s earlier handwriting, so that it seems he meant to expound the exemplary nature of the project from early on, and perhaps from the beginning.

27 Harris, John and Tait, A. A., Catalogue of the Drawings by Inigo Jones, John Webb and Isaac de Caus at Worcester College Oxford (Oxford, 1979), p. 84 Google Scholar, nos 214 (‘Composito capitali’) and 215 (‘Composito Order’). Webb’s Palladio (also at Worcester College) is the 1601 edition of the Quattro Libri interleaved with a manuscript translation and annotated by him.