Inigo Jones

English theatrical designer and architect

• Born: July 15, 1573
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: June 21, 1652
• Place of death: London, England

Jones designed the sets, costumes, and machinery for many of the most important English plays of the seventeenth century. In addition, he contributed greatly to the urban planning done under Charles I and gradually changed the architectural design and appearance of the city of London.

Early Life

Inigo Jones (IHN-uh-goh JOHNZ) was born July 15, 1573, and baptized four days later in the Church of Saint Bartholomew the Less in London. His father, a destitute cloth worker, attempted to provide for his son and three daughters until his death in 1597. Little is known about Jones’s life before 1605, but it is believed that members of the wealthy gentry were alerted to his artistic promise when he was quite young. At some point, this artistic promise recommended itself to William Herbert, the third earl of Pembroke, under whose patronage Jones traveled through Italy and other parts of Europe. According to his own assertion, Jones studied the ruins of ancient buildings while in Italy. The first existing records of his later life in London indicate that he had already attained a powerful cultural position, having negotiated his way through the patronage system.

The English court masque had come into prominence in Jones’s youth. The masque was designed solely for performance in the royal court, usually with only one performance. It was in this respect quite unlike the public theater exemplified by the plays of William Shakespeare. The court considered, and theatrical producers agreed, that the masque should mirror the stature and nobility of the king—it should represent the king and his royal authority, and consequently, any change in the art form would affect the way the king asserted his power.

The dominant architectural style in England during Jones’s apprenticeship was high Gothic. Jones is credited with ushering in an architectural style influenced by designs from classical antiquity. This development in English cultural history appeared gradually over a fifty-year period, but because Jones occupied the court-appointed positions of surveyor and surveyor general, he has been credited with a central role in the development.

Life’s Work

During the reigns of King James I and his heir, Charles I , the court masque became a primary means for royalty to display its power and prestige. Such was the nature of the production in 1605, on Twelfth Night—the evening before January 6, the day of Epiphany—of Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness (pr. 1605, pb. 1608). The production, mounted for James’s queen, Anne, was staged at Whitehall and marked Jones’s first appearance in London alongside Ben Jonson, who was the most prominent court poet and playwright of his day.

The long working relationship of Jones and Jonson that followed was at the center of the development of the masque as an art form—a form that was unique to the Renaissance and that reflected English social and political history. It is in this context that the significance of Jones’s life and art emerges. The first edition of The Masque of Blackness, which Jonson prepared for publication, included a full description of the design, scenes, machines, and dress used by Jones in the original production. Though Jonson’s inclusion of these details marks his recognition of Jones’s contribution, the two men did not share the same view of the nature of the masque. For Jonson, the masque’s informing spirit was his poetry, and all the rest was mere show; for Jones, the immediacy of the visible spectacle of the masque was its essential quality. His later career in architecture emerged from this strong conviction about the importance of theatrical design.

Over the next ten years, the contributions of these two artists resulted in increasing prominence for the masque in the royal court. With prominence came larger and larger budgets. The masque’s success was in large part a result of Jones’s introduction of recent Italian artistic developments. In the queen’s masque of 1605, as well as in his commission from Oxford University that same year, he employed movable scenery, which had not previously been done in England. Three-dimensional scenic background produced a visual illusion of reality. Jones also used various mechanical “Italianate devices”—exploding lights and similar contraptions. The most lasting feature was the proscenium arch, a curtained partition between the stage and the audience. By framing the action on the stage, the proscenium provided depth and perspective.

One outcome of Jones’s innovations was the advent of the hierarchically organized theater. The masque developed into a new emblem of state for the king, an idealized projection of his power. Its drama was not confined to the actual performance but extended to the seating of the spectators. The best seat was the point from which the scenery’s perspective achieved its full effect. The king sat there. Around this point a courtly drama developed, based on the seating position of courtiers. The closer the courtier was to the king, the greater was his favor with the king, or his potential to seek it.

In 1613, Jones returned to Italy to study architecture, painting, and sculpture. He also purchased works of art for English aristocrats; he had become the agent for the first private art collections in England. It was on this trip that Jones created his own major architectural opus, a collection of sketches with annotations of Andrea Palladio’s I quatro libri dell’architettura (1570; Architecture: In Four Books, 1736). In October, 1615, Jones rose to the office of surveyor general of the works, a position that assured for him a sufficient income until the opposition to and eventual overthrow of Charles I during the 1640’s.

The collaboration and friendship of Jonson and Jones waned toward the end of the decade, though they worked together as late as 1631. The development is explained in part by the commencement in 1619 of a second career for Jones. It was in that year that his prolific production of court masques prompted the king to appoint him the royal surveyor of the works. Jones held the position during the emergence of a new architectural style, King James Gothic. His industrious application to his duties led to the incorrect attribution to him of the designs of many buildings. In reality, most of his duties consisted of ordinary repairs to public buildings.

Until about 1620, Jones embarked on numerous projects of building and repair. The royal treasury was, however, rapidly emptying, and most of Jones’s designs were never executed. Few works of architecture by Jones remain. The most celebrated is the repair of the southwest corner of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. Other works include theaters, churches, and other public buildings.

One of Jones’s duties during his tenure as surveyor general had significant consequences. In 1620, King James commanded Jones to investigate the history of Stonehenge. After his death, Jones’s successor and heir, John Webb, used Jones’s notes to pursue his master’s inquiries, although most of the notes he ascribed to Jones in a publication were wholly concocted. Webb reacted to criticism of his farfetched and erroneously attributed theories by publishing a defense in which he provided considerable fruit for Jones biographers. The credibility of the information on Jones’s life also is questionable, however, because it confirms Webb’s initial claims.

Jonson repeatedly created unflattering depictions of Jones throughout the 1620’s and 1630’s. Jones, however, enjoyed more harmonious relations with other collaborators, including George Chapman, William Davenant, Richard Fletcher, and Thomas Carew. His fortune changed with the increasing opposition to Charles I. Jones took refuge with members of the nobility in 1643, remaining enclosed for more than two years until Oliver Cromwell’s forces captured and imprisoned him. As he had taken no part in the fighting, he was pardoned; he recommenced his work of building and repair, though by this time his health, which had never been good, was failing. He died on June 21, 1652.

Significance

With Jones’s introduction to English court masques of Italian theatrical innovations, the art form became a token of the political climate of his day. Jones’s contributions to the short-lived theatrical form also profoundly influenced the mainstream theater from which it initially distinguished itself.

Jones also is significant for his contribution, as royal surveyor and surveyor general, to a revival of classical architecture and the founding of numerous private art collections in England. Evidence shows, for example, that after his second visit to Italy, Jones convinced Charles I to commission Peter Paul Rubens to paint the ceiling of the banquet hall at Whitehall. Ironically, it was concern for the preservation of Rubens’s work from the effect of candle grease that led to the suspension of the presentation of masques in the hall for three years until masques were again performed at Whitehall, beginning in 1637, in a temporary room designed by Jones.

Bibliography

Cunningham, Peter. Inigo Jones: A Life of the Architect. London: Shakespeare Society, 1848. Remarks on some of his sketches for masques and dramas. Accompanied by many facsimiles of Jones’s drawings.

Goldberg, Jonathan. James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Contemporaries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Focuses on the images deployed by the rulers and the way in which these reveal the rulers’ conceptions of their own roles and stature.

Gotch, J. Alfred. Inigo Jones. London: Methuen, 1928. Reprint. New York: B. Blum, 1968. The authoritative biography of both the historical and the mythical Inigo Jones. Written in a high Victorian style, it is a fine example of historical biography.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. One of the main texts of the “New Historicism.” Incorporating modern semiotic and historical theories, Greenblatt analyzes the development of various conceptions of the self and their role in the art and politics of Jones’s time.

Leapman, Michael. Inigo: The Troubled Life of Inigo Jones, Architect of the Renaissance. London: Review, 2003. Jones’s life is recounted in an accessible style with a wealth of details, anecdotes, and description.

Mowl, Timothy, and Brian Earnshaw. Architecture Without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism Under Cromwell. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. A general survey of buildings constructed in England between 1642 and 1660, using Jones as a benchmark for the move away from architectural chaos to order.

Orgel, Stephen. The Jonsonian Masque. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965. Traces the development of the court masque, with particular emphasis on Jonson’s major role in it. Orgel’s contributions to this field of inquiry are enormous, and his studies illustrate a comprehensive grasp of the era.

Orrell, John. The Theatres of Inigo Jones and John Webb. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Contains all of the drawings that Jones and his pupil, Webb, prepared as designs for public theaters.

Shaw, Catherine. “Some Vanity of Mine Art”: The Masque in English Renaissance Drama. Salzburg, Austria: University of Salzburg, 1979. This doctoral thesis places the masque in the context of the more public theater in which Shakespeare, for example, worked. The author notes the mutual influences and relationships between these two art forms.

Summerson, John. Inigo Jones. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. A reprint of the 1964 biography, with a new introduction. Summerson reassessed Jones’s life and career, unearthing many previously unknown examples of Jones’s architecture.