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Ben Jonson and the Uses of Architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Gail Kern Paster
Gail Kern Paster*
Affiliation:
The George Washington University
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Extract

The terms of Jonson's quarrel with Inigo Jones about the rival claims of poet and architect have been clear ever since D. J. Gordon's discussion of the matter in 1949. The problem, as Professor Gordon explains, was far more significant than a temperamental clash between two ambitious artists vying for royal favor. Unfortunately, while they could probably agree about the inevitably intellectual origins of all artistic invention and about the important distinctions to be made between invention and expression, they could not help but come into conflict over the relative importance of poetry, on the one hand, and architecture, on the other. A passage from Vives translated in The Discoveries (160-167) indicates that Jonson knew and probably endorsed those divisions between the liberal and mechanical arts which placed architecture in the inferior group.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1974 , pp. 306 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1974

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References

1 In ‘Poet and Architect: The Intellectual Setting of the Quarrel between Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones,’ JWCI, 12 (1949), 152-178. [ 306 ]

2 On this theme, see the introduction to Sir Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture, ed. Frederick Hard, Folger Documents of Tudor and Stuart Civilization (1624; facsimile rpt. Charlottesville, Va., 1968), pp. lxv-lxvii. See also Sir Summerson, John, Architecture in Britain 1530-1830, Pelican History of Art (Harmondsworth, England, and Baltimore, Md., 1955), pp. 61–67 Google Scholar.

3 All citations from Jonson are to the edition of C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1925-52). I have normalized u, v, i, and j.

4 Gordon, ‘Poet and Architect,’ p. 162.

5 I have used the eighteenth-century translation of De re aedificatoria by Leoni, Giacomo entitled Ten Books on Architecture by Leone Battista Alberti, ed. Joseph Rykwert (1755; facsimile rpt. London, 1955)Google Scholar; here, preface. Though Leoni's translation first appeared in 1726, the editor has chosen to reprint the 1755 edition. I have followed customary usage in referring to the architectural treatises of the Renaissance by their original titles.

6 De re aed., preface.

7 Ibid.

8 The Elements of Architecture, p. 12. It should be noted that the page number reads ‘21’ in this facsimile, clearly a transposition on the part of the compositor.

9 Wittkower, Rudolf, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London, 1962), p. 69 Google Scholar.

10 See John R. Spencer's note in his edition of Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, 2 vols, (tr. and facsimile rpt. New Haven and London, 1965), 1, 246.

11 Wittkower, Architectural Principles, pp. 67-69.

12 ‘Alberti and Filarete: A Study in Their Sources,'JWCJ, 34 (1971), 98-99.

13 De re aed., vi, ii.

14 Garin, Eugenio, Science and Civic Life in the Italian Renaissance, trans. Peter Munz (Garden City, N.Y., 1969), p. 24 Google Scholar.

15 ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man,’ tr. Forbes, Elizabeth L., Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Cassirer, Kristeller, and Randall (1948; rpt. Chicago, 1956), p. 224 Google Scholar.

16 Architectural Principles, p. 28

17 Quoted in Summerson, Architecture in Britain, p. 67.

18 Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, 1, fol. 5, pp. 10-11.

19 Ibid., 1, fol. 6v p. 13.

20 De re aed., preface.

21 Preface to Book III. I have used the eighteenth-century translation by Du Bois, Nicholas entitled The Architecture of A. Palladio; in Four Books, 2 vols. (London, 1715)Google Scholar. According to the title page, this translation was ‘Revis'd, Design'd and Publish'd’ by Giacomo Leoni, Alberti's English translator.

22 Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, VIII, fol. 61v, p. 106.

23 On this theme, see Weiss, Roberto, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar.

24 De re aed., preface.

25 Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, VIII, fol. 61v, p. 106.

26 For a discussion of the terms ‘body’ and ‘soul,’ see Gordon, ‘Poet and Architect,' pp. 155-160.

27 This last reference is probably—and unfortunately—a reference to Jones's designs for the new Banqueting House, as Herford and Simpson point out, Ben Jonson, XI, 154, gloss on lines 9-10.

28 In ‘The Country House Poem of the Seventeenth Century,’ JWCI, 19 (1956), 164.

29 Ben Jonson, XI, 45, gloss on lines 83-84.

30 Designs by Inigo Jones, ed. Percy Simpson and C. F. Bell (Oxford, 1924), pl. IV.

31 In Festival Designs by Inigo Jones [catalogue of an exhibition of drawings from the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth] (International Exhibitions Foundation, 1967- 1968), No. 19.1 owe this reference to Waith, Eugene M., Ideas of Greatness: Heroic Drama in England, Ideas and Forms in English Literature (London, 1971)Google Scholar, p. 34n.

32 Festival Designs, No. 19

33 Ideas of Greatness, pp. 29-30.

34 Ibid., p. 30.

35 Ibid.

36 In Inigo Jones (Harmondsworth, England, and Baltimore, Md., 1966), p. 31.