STONE, NICHOLAS (1586–1647), English sculptor and architect, was the son of a quarryman of Woodbury, near Exeter, and as a boy was apprenticed to Isaac James, a London mason. About 1603 he went to Holland and worked under the sculptor Hendrik de Keyser (1567-1621) and his son Pieter, and married his master's daughter. Stone is said to have made the portico to the Westerkerk at Amsterdam. Returning to London about 1613 with Bernard Janssens (fl. 1610-1630), a fellow pupil,[1] he settled in South wark and obtained a large practice; in 1619 he was appointed master-mason to James I., and in 1626 to Charles I.; and he died in London on the 24th of August 1647. Stone, whose work is associated with Inigo Jones's introduction of Renaissance architecture into England, ranks as the great sculptor of his time and the rejuvenator of the art in England. He is best known by his monuments, notably those to Sir Francis Vere, the earl of Middlesex, and Francis Holies in West- minster Abbey; Sir Dudley Digges at Chilham church, Kent; Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, in Dover Castle (removed to Greenwich); Sir Thomas Sutton, at the Charterhouse (with Janssens); Sir Robert Drury at Hawstead church, Suffolk; Sir William Stonhouse at Radley church, Berkshire; Sir Thomas Bodley at Merton College, Oxford; Sir William Pope, in Wroxton church, near Banbury; Sir Nicholas Bacon, in Redgrave church, Suffolk (with Janssens); Dr John Donne (winding-sheet), at St Paul's Cathedral; and Sir Julius Caesar, in St Helen's, Bishopsgate.
He had three sons: John (d. 1667), a sculptor; Henry (d. 1653)—commonly known as " Old Stone "—a painter, whose copies of Van Dyck were famous, and whose portraits of Charles I. and others are in the National Portrait Gallery, and Nicholas (d. 1647), a sculptor, who worked under Bernini at Rome and left a sketch-book, which, with a note-book of his father's (giving a list of his works between 1614 and 1641), is in the Soane Museum.
See an article by A. E. Bullock in the Architectural Review, 1907, and the same author's illustrated monograph Some Sculptural Works of Nicholas Stone (Batsford, London, 1908).
- ↑ Also called Janssen (Dict. Nat. Biog.), Jansen and Janson. Possibly he was the brother of the Gerard (Geraert) Jansen or Johnson, of Southwark, who in 1616 executed the bust of Shakespeare in Stratford church; but it is uncertain whether the latter was identical with, or the son of, the Dutch tomb-maker Gerard Jansen described in Sir W. Dugdale's Diary as having, in 1593, lived for twenty-six years in England and as the father of five sons.