6 INIGO JONES AND THE ITALIAN INFLUENCE 



times shared with their employers) or to a detached wing. 

 Stateliness, not homeliness, was now the keynote. The 

 nobleman stood on a pedestal of grandeur, round which his 

 dependants grouped themselves as best they could, and among 

 them struggled the parson, the poet, and the man of letters. 

 The glorification of the individual found expression in his 

 house and his gardens which were all designed with theatric 

 magnificence. 



The changes here indicated will be dealt with at length in 

 subsequent chapters ; the first step towards them was taken 

 when the hall ceased to be a living-room and became a vestibule,, 

 as the result of an alteration in domestic habits, an alteration 

 which rendered easy the adoption of a house-plan more closely 

 related than was formerly possible to those Italian models to 

 which architects had been approximating their designs for half 

 a century. So far, the models had been copied but half- 

 heartedly, partly because of the conservatism of English habits, 

 partly from incomplete knowledge of Italian methods of design. 

 But as knowledge increased, both from the study of books and 

 from the first-hand investigations of travelling students, so was 

 the Italianising of English buildings accelerated ; and a great 

 obstacle to this progress was removed when the ancient use and 

 position of the hall which had a tradition of three centuries 

 behind them were no longer preserved. The movement 

 indicated was by no means regular ; it was quicker in some 

 places than in others, and in some hands than in others : much 

 depended upon the architects employed. Those who were 

 learned, those who had travelled, and again those who were 

 influenced by the cultured few, departed more completely from 

 old-fashioned ways than did those who had not enjoyed the 

 same advantages. The main stream of architectural develop- 

 ment is fairly well marked and continuous ; but there are in- 

 numerable backwaters in which the impetus of the current is 

 hardly perceptible. As a consequence there are to be found as 

 late as the end of the seventeenth century buildings which look 

 almost contemporary with those of the beginning. 



The man who did more than anyone else to bring learning 

 to bear on design, and to introduce into England a true and 

 correct knowledge of Italian detail, was that great artist, Iniga 

 Jones. His first architectural work of importance was the 

 Banqueting House at Whitehall, which was finished in 1622, 



