Inigo Jones was inspired by his travels in Italy and especially his second visit in 1613 where he visited major cities and buildings and compared theory with practice, from then on his style of architecture took a new form.
I want to explore the originality of Queen's house, how much of the design came from Inigo Jones the architect and how much came from Inigo Jones the posthumous sponsor of Palladianism, as he is often referred to.
Andrea Palladio is often seen as the main inspiration to building Queen's house and Jones took his treaties 'I quattro libri dell'architettura' as an architectural …show more content…
and Robey, A. (2000) Greenwich: An architectural history of the royal hospital for seamen, and the queen’s house. New Haven, CT: Published for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, in association with English Heritage.
Jones belonging to the palladian tradition, but also the belief to an canonical approach to classical architecture based on the primacy of antiquity, as interpreted principally by Vitruvius and on the classical orders of architecture developed by alberti, bramante, raphael and other architects including in particular giulo romano and sebastiano serlio. Though this canonical tradition was epitomised by Palladio, in particular in his book 'I quattro libri dell'architettura', to concentrate on Palladio in isolation was to misunderstand the tradition in which he stood.
Three topics in particular initially interested him: the practicalities of building techniques and materials; vitruvius account of of the principles of architecture and Palladio's exposition of the 5 orders. These were soon followed by Vitruvius description of various antique temples, of the temples illustrated in Palladio's fourth book, serlio's enthusiastic account of the …show more content…
In most cases there is no proof that he did or was. What is important is that throughout Italy, but most importantly in the Veneto and Emilia; he would have found himself in an architectural climate sympathetic to the beliefs he had acquired in England. He would have felt here that his work lay within the mainstream of an important european architectural movement, and that it was the obvious, modern way to build.
It was not unitl 1632 that construction resumed in the Queen's house in earnest for queen Henrietta Maria. It was completed by 1638 coming to at least £7,500. The result was far different from the Scamozzian composition proposed two decades earlier.
Instead of the classically upright villa-like form of the preliminary design with its dominant central portico and hipped roof that would have looked at home in the Veneto, the building has a distinctly cubic feel emphasised by the projecting terrace that forms the approach, the absence of a central pediment, the continuos balustrade disguising the roof and an altered relationship between the window and wall in which the windows now appear as isolated elements in a dominant wall