JONES, Inigo
(b. 1573, London, d. 1652, London)

Interior view

1619-22
Photo
Banqueting House, Whitehall, London

By 1619, Iinigo Jones had received his greatest commission, the new Banqueting House in Whitehall, a building for court festivities originally intended as part of a fairly large palace complex. Within only three months, during which Jones experimented solutions derived from antiquity and the work of Palladio, he created a monumental building comprising a creative mixture of Venetian and Vicenza devices which became characteristic of the English Palladian style.

The great banqueting room, for which Rubens painted the ceiling frescoes, is as wide as an ancient basilica. The vertical plane is dominated by Ionic half-columns in the lower storey and composite pilasters in the upper storey, a pattern which also appears on the external walls.

The picture shows the great banqueting room.

View the ground plan and section of Banqueting House, Whitehall.