The amount of Jones’s own work in architecture is scarcely so large as
has hitherto been supposed. In regard to the various buildings with
which he has been credited, some of the attributions are supported
by contemporary evidence in the shape of drawings or of references in
letters and documents; others by the direct enumeration of his staunch
admirer, John Webb, who was his pupil and assistant, who married a
kinswoman of his, and was the executor of his will. Others rest upon
tradition or upon the opinions of critics. Tradition is not altogether
reliable, owing partly to a natural tendency to attribute any
outstanding piece of work to the most celebrated artist of the time,
and partly to the natural desire of owners to attach a well-known name
to their possessions. The value of a critic’s opinion obviously depends
upon that uncertain factor--the ability and equipment of the critic for
his task, and although the opinion of a competent critic will always
count for much, it cannot count for so much as direct evidence. The
evidence in this case consists of allusions in contemporary letters,
not very numerous or helpful; of architectural drawings by Jones, which
are helpful but not numerous; and of the testimony of Webb, who was
in the best position to know what his master actually designed. Webb
has occasion in his “Vindication of Stone-Heng Restored,” to mention
Jones’s principal works, which he thus enumerates: The west portico
of St Paul’s Cathedral, and the reducing-of the body of it “from
the steeple to the west end, into that order and uniformity we now
behold”;[13] St Paul’s, Covent Garden (Fig. 23), “built likewise with
the porticoes about the Piazza there by Mr. Jones” (Fig. 24)[14]; the
royal chapels at Denmark House and St James’s;[15] the Banqueting House
at Whitehall; the royal house at Newmarket;[15] and the queen mother’s
new building at Greenwich.[16] The inscription on Jones’s monument
which was put up by Webb, designated him as “architectus celeberrimus,”
and recorded merely that he built the Royal White Hall (Aul. Alb. Reg.)
and restored the Cathedral of St Paul.[17]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--The Queen’s House, Greenwich,
1619–35.]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Elevation.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Coleshill, Berkshire, 1650. Ground
Plan.]
This list need not necessarily be considered as complete, but Webb
evidently regarded the buildings he mentions as the most noteworthy
of Jones’s productions, inasmuch as he advances them as proofs of
his skill in architecture, upon which his fame would rest much more
securely than upon his literary and antiquarian effort in “Stone-Heng
Restored.”[18]
The authority for the attribution to Jones of other buildings, such
as the enlargement of Somerset House, the chirurgeon’s theatre, and
King Charles’s block at Greenwich, rests upon the Worcester College
and Burlington-Devonshire drawings, but these buildings should more
properly be credited to Webb, by whose hand they were drawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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