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Inigo Jones’s architectural education before 1614

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

Inigo Jones’s position as the founder of classical architecture in England is secure. The series of buildings which he designed during his time as Surveyor of the King’s Works (1615–42), from the Banqueting House in Whitehall to the portico of Old St Paul’s Cathedral, testify to his thorough understanding and command of Italian Renaissance vocabulary, his employment of proportional systems and his ability to ensure the faithful execution of his designs.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1992

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References

Notes

1 Higgott, G., ‘Inigo Jones in Provence’, Architectural History, vol. 26 (1983), pp. 2434 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Gotch, J. A., Inigo Jones (1928, reprinted New York, 1968), pp. 23, 2627 Google Scholar.

3 These words are not fully visible in the Oriel Press facsimile (see note 7), but are readily readable in the volume itself.

4 Summerson, J., Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 5th ed. (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 112 Google Scholar.

5 The Waipole Society, vol. 18 (1930), p. 105.

6 To the list published in The King’s Arcadia (Arts Council Exhibition Catalogue, 1973, ed. J. Harris, S. Orgel and R. Strong) three recently discovered volumes can be added. Two of these have annotations, a quarto copy of Serlio, now in the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, and a copy of G. P. Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte, della pittura, scoltura, et architettura.

7 A facsimile was published in 1970 by Oriel Press, together with a transcription, under the editorship of Bruce Allsopp. It is generally of good quality, but a number of the notes are difficult or impossible to read, and inevitably different ink colourations are not conveyed. The most unsatisfactory feature of what has in general been of enormous value in encouraging a study ofjones’s notes, is that the transcription contains many minor errors.

8 Orgel, S. and Strong, R., Inigo Jones, The Theatre of the Stuart Court (1973), vol. 1, no. 13 Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., no. 64.

10 For what follows see my unpublished article, ‘The dating of Inigo Jones’s annotations’ in Essays presented to Peter Murray (1980), typescript in the University of London Library, and G. Higgott’s article cited in note 1 above.

11 J. Harris and G. Higgott, litigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings (1989), pp. 36-39.

12 Higgott, ‘Inigo Jones in Provence’.

13 Hankins, J., Plato in the Italian Renaissance (1990), vol. 1, pp. 1526 Google Scholar, for methods of reading and annotating books in the Renaissance. I owe this reference to Christy Anderson.

14 Quoted in Harris and Higgott, pp. 55-56.

15 See references on P.II.78 to “my Papars” and on P.IV.21 and 29 to “my noat book marked A”.

16 The copy of Gamucci’s guidebook in the library of Worcester College, Oxford, is not annotated and does not bear Jones’s signature. As Christy Anderson has pointed out to me, it is probably wrongly included amongjones’s books, and his own copy must be lost.

17 These translations strongly suggest that Jones was using the standard Italian-English dictionary, John Florio’s A Worlde of Wordes (1598).

18 ‘The oak, because it is dense, sinewy and with few holes, is best for works at ground level’.

19 ‘A feature which give them very great splendour’.

20 ‘But in this cornice the architect showed good judgement in making the top moulding run across unbroken, and breaking the other members back from it, a feature which turns out altogether graceful and renders the cornice stronger, and preserves the whole work from the rain.’

21 Higgott, ‘Inigo Jones in Provence’.

22 S. Wren, Parentalia: or, Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens (1750), p. 354.

23 Peacock, J., ‘New sources for the masque designs of Inigo Jones’, Apollo CVII (1978), pp. 98111 Google Scholar, and other articles by the same author cited in Harris and Higgott, p. 329.

24 Royal Institute of British Architects, Burlington Devonshire Collection, VIII/9 r for P. IV. 76 and 77; VIII/9 v forP.IV.79;X/6ArforP.1.24. and 25; X/6A v for P.1.50; X/6B r for P.1.36;XI/13 r for P.IV.119-21; XI/15 v for P. IV. 33. It is puzzling that Jones mentions Wotton’s name when referring to X/6A v, but not with reference to the recto of the same sheet.

25 See the summary catalogue of the Burlington Devonshire Collection printed for World Microfilms Publications.

26 Burlington/Devonshire Collection XIII/5.