Fatefully, when the Whitehall Palace was burned to the ground in 1698, the only surviving structure was the complex’s most artistically and architecturally significant—the Whitehall Banqueting House. When the banqueting house was built in 1622, Whitehall had been England’s primary royal residence for almost a century. With more than 1,500 rooms, Whitehall was the largest complex of secular buildings in England.
Buttressing the Banqueting House
The origin of the Banqueting House can be traced to 1581, when a simple wooden structure was added to host the duke of Anjou. Later King James I and his consort, Queen Anne, found it a convenient location for plays and masques and decided to replace it. But no architects of distinction were active in England at the time, and the 1607 Banqueting House was a disappointment to the king, who was particularly unhappy with how its columns limited most of an audience’s view during performances. Its accidental destruction gave him the excuse to rebuild it, just as England, coincidentally, had an architect up to the task.
Surveyor-General of the King’s Works since 1615, Inigo Jones was the first English architect to have traveled extensively in Italy and studied Renaissance and ancient Roman architecture. But he had entered royal employment as a designer of costumes and stage settings for theatrical productions. Jones worked at the 1607 Banqueting House in collaboration with playwright Ben Jonson during the height of the dramatist’s career. As one of the first to create elaborate moving scenery, Jones demonstrated an architectural talent that put him on the path to his greatest fame.
Jones’s only significant, architectural project had been the Queen’s House, which was halted in 1618 due to a decline in Anne’s health and her untimely death the following year. The Banqueting House would become Jones’s first major, completed work.
Rise of Classicism
Despite the minor influence the Renaissance began to have in England during the reign of King Henry VII (reigned 1485–1509), Tudor-style architecture dominated during the first half of the 16th century and remained fundamentally grounded in the medieval tradition. Later, Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture drew heavily on both the medieval and the classicist, with the latter attracting increased attention over the course of King James’s reign (1603–1625).
In the book “Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings,” British architectural historian Vaughan Hart credited Jones as being the first British architect to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. Having traveled to Italy to study the designs of the Italian masters—particularly admiring Andrea Palladio—Jones introduced the Palladian style to Britain.
The Whitehall Banqueting House was the first major architectural work completed in England in a pure classicist style. As a venue for royally sponsored theatrical productions, the Banqueting Hall was regularly visited by social and cultural elites. Throughout the 1620s and 1630s, Jones accepted increasing numbers of architectural commissions by those impressed with his style: He completed the Queen’s House in 1635 for Henrietta Maria, continued his work as a theatrical designer, and planned a thorough renovation of the remainder of Whitehall Palace, which, however, was first prevented by the English Civil War and then failed to interest Charles’s successors.
Interior Designs
In 1629, King Charles I commissioned the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) to complete a series of artwork his father had contemplated: 10 paintings to decorate the Banqueting House ceiling. Three canvases were to be allegorical tributes to his father, King James I, the first monarch to rule the entirety of the British Isles; these included “The Peaceful Reign of James I” (also known as “The Wise Rule of James I”), “The Apotheosis of James I” and “The Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland.” With the 10 canvases covering more than 2,000 square feet, they were the largest artworks Rubens had painted.
Rubens worked from a studio in Antwerp—part of a nearby convent large enough to hold the canvasses—so he could oversee the assistants who painted the simpler parts of the projects. His study of the Banqueting House while visiting England, though undoubtedly thorough, could not substitute for regular visits were he near.
While consultations with Jones helped bridge the gap, it also caused a problem. Despite their brilliance, both Jones and Rubens were not aware that while both their countries use “foot” as a term of measurement, the English used it to designate a shorter length than the Flemish did. Jones and Rubens’s top assistants were left with the task of determining how best to shorten the canvases, which were the painter’s grandest project and capped off the architect’s most important work.
Spared by the fire that destroyed Whitehall, the legacy of Jones and Rubens is now well preserved by Historic Royal Palaces. Open to the public, the Banqueting House has become a national monument and a cultural landmark of England’s architectural achievements.
