Notting Hill Living
Inigo Jones (1573 - 1652)
Inigo Jones was the son of a cloth worker in Smithfield, and a contemporary of Shakespeare.
He travelled to Italy, presumably to study architecture and view the ruins of Roman buildings. By 1608 he had returned to London. His early fame was not as an architect but as a stage designer. He produced innovative and lavish designs, and was soon in competition with Ben Jonson for Royal favour, a contest which Jones ultimately won.
He returned to Italy in 1613 and became converted to Palladianism. When he returned to England in 1615 he was appointed Surveyor of the King’s Works, a post he held until the Civil War. His most famous buildings during that period were the Queen’s House, Greenwich, the Prince’s Lodging, Newmarket and the Banqueting House, Whitehall. The Queen’s House was the first truly classical building in England. It is the only one of his buildings for Charles I which survives.
The Parliamentary party seized all his property, but he was pardoned in 1646 and, from then on, was quite happy to take commissions from the anti-Royalist party.
He was the greatest architect of the first half of the 17th century. Although he introduced classical architecture and Palladianism to England, his influence was influenced to the Royal Circle, and the movement died out soon after his death. But his work was partly the inspiration for the Palladian Revival by Burlington and Kent in the 18th century. Kent published the designs of Inigo Jones in 1727, although most of the designs in the book were not actually by him.
