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Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings
, 336 pages, illustrated in colour and black and white throughout, complete
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1989
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December 17, 2021
It surprises me a bit to be the only person listed to have finished the exhibit catalog, but then it preceded the birth of Goodreads by quite a number of years. I attended the local visitation of the Inigo Jones Architectural Drawings exhibit (here in Pittsburgh, and at the Frick, if I remember correctly) and snatched a copy of the catalogue. Jones was a name I would come across regularly, but whose work I only knew as vaguely Palladian.
Thirty years or so is an all-too-common seasoning stretch in my library, but I finally decided to go through it cover-to-cover, rather than just leafing through it from time to time. (Usually for writing inspiration rather than research.)
The reading of this volume was a pleasant journey through a phase of architecture, but I have to admit that it didn't give me the ability to look at a building and say, "Inigo Jones" in contrast to another name. I can see that he adapted Vitruvius, adapted Palladio, adapted European design books, and so forth, but the term "rationalizing" gets thrown around a lot as defining his adaptations, and it is a word without much specific content. He changed ratios, he tended to simplify, but not always.
One of the issues with Jones's place in history is that so little of what he designed got built, and so little of that has survived. This collection if full of drawings that don't match what we know of the existing building, though it was built under Jones's supervision. And the Great Fire of London destroyed all his work on St. Paul's.
It would have been instructive, if tangential, if there had been an essay differentiating his work from that of Christopher Wren. This book points out how many of Jones's innovations didn't catch on in his lifetime, but were revived a hundred years later. Seeing what Wren did, and did not, adopt would have made Jones's legacy clearer.
Good book to have on the shelf, but not as instructive as one would like.
Thirty years or so is an all-too-common seasoning stretch in my library, but I finally decided to go through it cover-to-cover, rather than just leafing through it from time to time. (Usually for writing inspiration rather than research.)
The reading of this volume was a pleasant journey through a phase of architecture, but I have to admit that it didn't give me the ability to look at a building and say, "Inigo Jones" in contrast to another name. I can see that he adapted Vitruvius, adapted Palladio, adapted European design books, and so forth, but the term "rationalizing" gets thrown around a lot as defining his adaptations, and it is a word without much specific content. He changed ratios, he tended to simplify, but not always.
One of the issues with Jones's place in history is that so little of what he designed got built, and so little of that has survived. This collection if full of drawings that don't match what we know of the existing building, though it was built under Jones's supervision. And the Great Fire of London destroyed all his work on St. Paul's.
It would have been instructive, if tangential, if there had been an essay differentiating his work from that of Christopher Wren. This book points out how many of Jones's innovations didn't catch on in his lifetime, but were revived a hundred years later. Seeing what Wren did, and did not, adopt would have made Jones's legacy clearer.
Good book to have on the shelf, but not as instructive as one would like.
Displaying 1 of 1 review