Inigo: The Troubled Life of Inigo Jones, Architect of the English Renaissance FROM THE PUBLISHER
This first major biography of Inigo Jones for 75 years paints a vivid and poignant portrait of a quarrelsome, inspired and troubled genius. Inigo foned was one of the great English architects. His elegant classical buildings, including the Banqueting House in Whitehall and the Queen's House at Greenwich, once radical, remain testaments to his vision. As well as his role as the King's Surveyor, Inigo was a bold traveller and innovative theatrical designer. Yet he was ultimately a victim of his turbulent times. His extravagant masques became a symbol of the spendthrift Stuart monarchy, and Jones was guilty by association when Civil War was declared. He was finally arrested by Parliamentary forces in 1645. In 1649, in a cruel irony, Jones learnt that Charles I had been executed in front of his cherished Banqueting House.
SYNOPSIS
A new biography of the first and greatest of the English Renaissance architects.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Having begun his career as an innovative theatrical set designer of masques for royal courts in collaboration with the poet Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones (1573-1652) was among the most noted of British Palladian architects. Best known for the Queen's House at Greenwich and for the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London, Jones interpreted Palladio's principles and buildings with dignity and originality. Written with novelistic flair and journalistic detail, this biography begins with perhaps its most important feature, a time line indicating significant events in each year of Jones's life from 1603 on. Leapman (The World for a Shilling) includes great detail on the profound influence of the architect's continental travels. Unfortunately, a signature of color illustrations and low-resolution black-and-white images dispersed throughout do not do justice to the work; because of its superior illustrative material and greater depth, James Lees-Milne's The Age of Inigo Jones (o.p.) remains the better choice. For large collections only.-Paul Glassman, Hofstra Univ. Lib., Hempstead, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A lively biography of Inigo Jones (1573-1652), "a proud, vain, quarrelsome hypochondriac" who, in his odd moments, designed some of England's most famous buildings. Not many of Jones's buildings stand intact, allows Londoner and journalist Leapman (The World for a Shilling, not reviewed), and "many works speculatively attributed to Inigo are now thought to have been designed by others." Still, the plan of Covent Garden and the reality of London's Banqueting House, before which Charles I lost his head in January 1649, provide ample evidence of his brilliance as a designer and builder who improved Italianate models with his own innovations. Jones's rise to fame and influence was unlikely, for he was born into comparative poverty, the son of a clothmaker. Yet, thanks to a sort of Head Start program put into place by Queen Elizabeth in the later stages of her reign, he was given a chance to travel to Italy, soak up some culture, and, more important, get to know the nobility. As a dedicated "young man on the make," Jones soon came into his own as a designer of masques-elaborate and strange rituals of the rich and famous of the day, which Leapman nicely deconstructs-and as a litterateur who was the sometime friend, sometime rival of the likes of Ben Jonson and George Chapman. Considering his highly evolved toadying, it's ironic that Jones's most famous building should have been a "backdrop for regicide," but Cromwell and company almost certainly did so deliberately, counterposing Jones's classicism with their own ideas of modernity as they relieved Charles of his head. Leapman brightly writes that in this instance Jones's "scenery, as always, but immaculate; but on this occasion he had nocontrol over the script."A capable, readable life of a man who was arguably less accomplished but inarguably more interesting than his younger contemporary Christopher Wren.
Art & Photography
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