Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

(Bozica Vekic) #1

pointed surveyor of works to James I in 1615 and he sub-
sequently held the same office under Charles I.
Jones’s earliest surviving structure is the Queen’s
House at Greenwich, London (1616–35), which was built
in the style of an Italian villa and was the first strictly clas-
sical English building. His greatest work, however, was
the building of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall
(1619–22), which owed much to the ideas of Palladio, and
subsequent designs for the rebuilding of the whole of
Whitehall Palace. The only other surviving royal building
by Jones is the Queen’s chapel at St. James’s Palace
(1623–27), the first English church in the classical style.
Jones also designed London’s first piazza (at Covent Gar-
den in 1630), including the Palladian church of St. Paul,
and several country houses, and directed the restoration
of St. Paul’s Cathedral (1632–42); this last work was un-
fortunately lost in the Great Fire of London (1666). Jones’s
career ended with the civil war in the 1640s, but his in-
fluence upon later English architects was profound.
Further reading: Michael Leapman, Inigo: The Trou-
bled Life of Inigo Jones, Architect of the English Renaissance
(London: Hodder Headline, 2003); John Peacock, The
Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context (Cam-
bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Roy
Strong, Britannia Triumphans: Inigo Jones, Rubens and
Whitehall Palace (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980);
John Summerson, Inigo Jones (Harmondsworth, U.K.:
Penguin, 1966; rev. ed. New Haven, Conn. and London:
Yale University Press, 2000).


Jonghelinck, Jakob (1530–1606) Netherlands medallist
and sculptor
After studying in Milan with Leone LEONI, Jonghelinck,
who was born in Antwerp, returned to the Netherlands in



  1. Between 1558 and 1566 he executed the tomb of
    Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, who had died nearly
    a century earlier, for the church of Our Lady in Bruges. As
    this tomb was situated beside the late 15th-century tomb
    of Charles’s daughter, Mary of Burgundy, Jonghelinck im-
    itated the style of the earlier artist, an example of anti-
    quarianism rare in 16th-century art, which customarily
    eschewed the Gothic past in favor of neoclassicism. Al-
    though Jonghelinck’s life-size bronze of the infamous
    duke of ALBAin the Antwerp citadel was destroyed during
    the revolt of 1577, its appearance is reflected in a bust of
    the same sitter now in New York. Jonghelinck’s bronzes
    are technically very accomplished and his portraits have
    considerable characterization.


Jonson, Ben(jamin) (1572–1637) English dramatist,
poet, and critic
Jonson received a classical education under William CAM-
DENat Westminster School in his native London, but then
followed his stepfather’s trade of bricklaying. In the 1590s
he fought in Flanders and later became an actor. His first


great success as a dramatist was Every Man in his Humour
(1598), the forerunner of “the comedy of humors” at
which he excelled, but the same year he was imprisoned
for killing a fellow-actor and barely escaped hanging. He
converted to Catholicism in gaol and remained a Roman
Catholic for 12 years. In 1605 he was again in trouble,
along with George CHAPMANand John Marston, for anti-
Scots satire in Eastward Ho! He nonetheless became a fa-
vorite producer of entertainments and masques for James
I’s court, usually in collaboration with Inigo JONES(see
MASQUE). In 1616 the king awarded him a pension.
Johnson’s great comedies—Volpone (1606), Epicoene
(1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair
(1614)—are outstanding for their energy and comic in-
vention. His tragedies—Sejanus (1603) and Catiline
(1611)—were less popular, but are models of classical
construction and contain some fine blank verse. In 1612–
13 he accompanied Raleigh’s turbulent son, young Walter,
as his tutor on a tour of Continental Europe. After pub-
lishing his collected Works (1616) Jonson abandoned the
stage for a decade, but his reputation as a man of letters
continued to grow. He was a great mentor to younger writ-
ers (“the tribe of Ben”), 33 of whom contributed elegies to
the commemorative volume Jonsonus Virbius (1638) after
his death. Among the troubles of his later years were a fire
that destroyed his library and unpublished manuscripts
(1623), the failure of several plays, a paralytic stroke
(1628), financial distress, and a feud with Inigo Jones,
whom he satirized in The Tale of a Tub (1634).
Jonson’s chief work in prose was Timber, or Discover-
ies made upon Men and Matter (1640), but his recorded
conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden,
whom he met in Scotland in 1618, give the most vivid im-
pression of his ideas on poetry and people. His poetry in-
cludes some magnificent lyrics for his masques, such as
“Queen and huntress, chaste and fair” from Cynthia’s Rev-
els (1600), and the famous epitaph on the child actor
Salathiel Pavy (published in Epigrams, 1616).
Further reading: Anthony W. Johnson, Ben Jonson:
Poetry and Architecture (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press,
1994); David Riggs, Ben Jonson: A Life (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1989); Charles J. Summers and
Ted-Larry Pebworth, Ben Jonson Revised (New York:
Twayne, 2000).

Josquin Des Prés See DES PRÉS, JOSQUIN

Joubert, Laurent (1529–1582) French physician
Born in the Dauphiné, Joubert studied at Montpellier, be-
coming chancellor of the faculty of medicine there. Ap-
pointments as Catherine de’ Medici’s personal physician
and then as one of the king’s physicians followed. Joubert
was a prolific author in both Latin and French. His first
treatise, though not published until 1579, was the Traité
du Ris; his most notorious the Erreurs populaires (1578),

JJoouubbeerrtt,, LLaauurreenntt 2 26633
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