Inigo Jones

Inigo Jones, born in London on 15 July 1573 and baptised at St Bartholomew-the-Less, is recognised as England’s first major architect of the early modern period. He was also the first to apply Vitruvian principles of proportion and symmetry to English buildings. By bringing the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to England, Jones became the country’s most prominent architect. His lasting impact on London includes the Queen’s House—the first English building executed in a purely classical style—the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and the layout of Covent Garden square, which later served as a template for West End developments. Beyond architecture, he contributed significantly to stage design, creating scenery and costumes for numerous royal masques, many in partnership with Ben Jonson.

Jones was born in Smithfield, the son of clothworker Inigo Jones Snr., but little is known about his early years. Later Welsh claims that his family originated in Wales and that his birth name was Ynir or Ynyr Jones are unsupported by contemporary records. He did not enter architecture through the usual routes of craft apprenticeship or early work in the Office of Works, though Christopher Wren later noted that Jones had been an apprentice joiner near St Paul’s Churchyard. Before 1603, a wealthy patron—possibly the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Rutland—sent him to Italy to study drawing after being impressed by his sketches. From Italy, he travelled to Denmark, where he worked for King Christian IV on the designs of Rosenborg and Frederiksborg palaces.

Jones first gained fame as a designer of costumes and stage settings, particularly for masques. Under Queen Anne of Denmark’s patronage, he is credited with introducing movable scenery and the proscenium arch to English theatre. Between 1605 and 1640, he staged over 500 performances, collaborating for many years with Ben Jonson despite a rivalry over whether stage design or literature mattered more in theatre. Jonson mocked Jones in several works over two decades. More than 450 of Jones’s drawings for scenery and costumes survive, showing his skill as a draughtsman and his evolution from showing “no knowledge of Renaissance draughtsmanship” between 1605 and 1609 to an “accomplished Italianate manner” and understanding of Italian set design, especially that of Alfonso and Giulio Parigi. This suggests a second trip to Italy around 1606, influenced by ambassador Henry Wotton. Jones became fluent in Italian and owned an Italian copy of Andrea Palladio’s *I quattro libri dell’architettura* with marginal notes referring to Wotton. Palladio heavily influenced his architectural work, with Vitruvius playing a lesser role.

Jones’s first recorded architectural design was a monument to Frances, Lady Cotton, commissioned by Rowland Cotton around 1608–1611 in Norton-in-Hales, Shropshire, which showed early classical tendencies. In July 1606, he created scenery for a masque at Theobalds for the Earl of Salisbury. Over the following years, he made drawings for Salisbury’s New Exchange in the Strand (construction began June 1608) and the central tower of St Paul’s Cathedral, revealing practical inexperience and immature handling of themes from Palladio, Serlio, and Sangallo. In 1609, possibly after accompanying Salisbury’s son, Viscount Cranborne, around France, Jones acted as an architectural consultant at Hatfield House, making small design modifications. In 1610, he was appointed Surveyor to Prince Henry, for whom he devised the masques *the Barriers* and *the Masque of Oberon*, and may have been involved in alterations to St James’s Palace.

On 27 April 1613, Jones became Surveyor of the King’s Works and soon after toured Italy with the Earl of Arundel, a key patron in English art history. During this trip, he encountered the architecture of Rome, Padua, Florence, Vicenza, Genoa, and Venice. His surviving sketchbook reveals his interest in artists like Parmigianino and Andrea Schiavone, and he met Vincenzo Scamozzi. His annotated copy of Palladio’s *Quattro libri* shows his focus on Roman antiquity over contemporary Italian fashion. Jones was likely the first native Englishman to study Roman ruins firsthand, which was crucial to the classical architecture he later introduced in England and Wales.

From 1605 to 1640, Jones produced masques, but his most famous work in this field came from his long collaboration with Ben Jonson. After fifteen years of working together, they argued over what mattered most in a masque: Jonson insisted on the importance of the spoken word, while Jones believed the visual spectacle was paramount and that the architect deserved as much creative freedom as the writer.