Jones, Inigo

b. 1573 London, d. 1652

English architect, born in London. He was sometimes called the 'English Palladio', for he was the first to introduce pure Renaissance architecture, adapting Italian ideas, especially those of Palladio, to English requirements. Little is known of his life, beyond the fact that he appears to have travelled a great deal, particularly in Italy. It is possible that he was sent to Italy to study by William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke. At any rate he was in Venice around 1603 when he was sent for by the King of Denmark. A quite unfounded legend suggests that he designed the palaces of Rosenborg and Frederiksborg.

He accompanied Anne of Denmark to the English court in 1604, and there designed the scenery for a number of masques, in which he introduced the new Italian perspective scenery into England and also the proscenium arch. In 1615, after another visit to Italy, Jones became surveyor-general of the royal buildings, and in 1616 he began the Queen's House at Greenwich. In 1619 he was commissioned to design additions to Whitehall, including the banqueting-house. He held the same offices under Charles I. The Civil War interrupted his activities (his loyalty to the Stuarts caused him to be fined twice) and other examples of his work are not numerous. Besides the two mentioned, his only buildings still surviving are the chapel of Marlborough House, London (1623-27), and part of Wilton House, Wiltshire, including the 'Double Cube Room' (1649-52); but a good example of his work is to be found in St Paul's, Covent Garden, burnt down in 1795, but re-erected in the same style; this was part of his design of Covent Garden Piazza, an early example of an architecturally conceived civic space. He may have designed Lindsey house in Lincoln's Inns fields, around 1640.

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