of Inigo Jones were much wider than those of any of these predecessors. His singular name has an Italian ring, but he was born of London parentage in 1573 and is said to have been apprenticed to a joiner.[1] Through the generosity of the third Earl of Pembroke he had opportunities of travel, and spent much of his early life in Italy and in the service of Christian IV of Denmark. He seems to have been back in England by 28 June 1603, when the accounts of the Earl of Rutland record a payment of £10 to 'Henygo Jones, a picture maker'. He is not known to have taken part in the masks of the following winter, but Jonson acknowledges that 'the bodily part' of the Mask of Blackness on 6 January 1605 was his 'design and act', and in August of the same year he took charge of the plays given before James in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, and contrived their changes of scene with the aid of revolving triangular screens of Italian design. His place as an architect of court masks was now assured, and even the poets, to whom the descriptions of the performances naturally fell, found it impossible to conceal the fact that his functions were at least as important as their own. Jonson in his earlier descriptions is punctilious in rendering due credit to his colleague.[2] So too are Daniel and Campion.[3]
- ↑ For the career of Jones, cf. D. N. B., Reyher, 75; R. Blomfield in Portfolio (1889), 88, 113, 126; and Renaissance Architecture in England, i. 97; H. P. Horne, An Essay on the Life of Inigo Jones, Architect in The Hobby Horse (1893), 22, 64; Cunningham, Inigo Jones (1848). Designs by Jones for the scenery, stage-machinery, and dresses of masks and other court entertainments are in Lansdowne MS. 1171, and in the collections of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth and of the Royal Institute of British Architects. They are mostly of the Caroline rather than the Jacobean period. A few have been reproduced by Cunningham, Reyher, and Lawrence, ii. 97. P. Simpson (Sh. England, ii. 311) gives eight figures for the Mask of Queens.
- ↑ 'The design and act of all which, together with the device of their habits, belong properly to the merit and reputation of Master Inigo Jones, whom I take modest occasion in this fit place to remember, lest his own worth might accuse me of an ignorant neglect from my silence' (Hymenaei); 'The structure and ornament . . . was entirely Master Jones's invention and design. . . . All which I willingly acknowledge for him; since it is a virtue planted in good natures, that what respects they wish to obtain fruitfully from others they will give ingenuously themselves' (Queens).
- ↑ 'The artificiall part onely speakes Master Inago Jones' (Tethys' Festival); 'I suppose few have ever seen more neat artifice than Master Inigo Jones shewed in contriving their motion, who in all the rest of the workmanship which belonged to the whole invention shewed extraordinary industry and skill, which if it be not as lively exprest in writing as it appeared in view, rob not him of his due, but lay the blame on my want of right apprehending his instructions for the adorning his art' (Lords).
to him, cf. L. Cust, The Painter E (Annual of Walpole Soc. ii. 1; iii. 113). On Ferrabosco and Ubaldini, ch. xiv (Italians).
