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Revision as of 17:14, 16 December 2008

The prior content of Giano's talk page can be found at User:Giano/talk.

Thank you it is now on my watchlist.

Can someone upload this Ingo Jones drawing for me please It is originally drawn by Jones in 1638 so no probs with copyright. Giano (talk) 15:25, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you JHochman most kind.

The Banqueting House in London, England is the grandest and most familiar survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house, and the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall. The building is important in the history of English architecture, as the first classical building to be completed in a style which was to transform English architecture.

Begun in 1619, and designed by Inigo Jones in a style influenced by Palladio, it was completed in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, just 27 years before King Charles I of England was executed on a scaffold in front of it in January 1649.

The building was controversially re-faced in Portland stone in the 19th century, though the details of the original facade were faithfully preserved. Today, the Banqueting House is a national monument, open to the public and preserved as a Grade I listed building.

History

The Palace of Whitehall was largely the creation of King Henry VIII, expanding an earlier mansion which had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, originally known as York Place. The King was determined that his new palace should be the "biggest palace in Christendom", a place befitting his newly created status as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. All evidence of the disgraced Wolsey was eliminated and the building rechristened the Palace of Whitehall.

During Henry's reign the palace had no designated banqueting house, the King preferring to banquet in a temporary structure purpose-built in the gardens. The first permanent banqueting house at Whitehall had a short life. It was built for James I but it was destroyed by fire in January 1619, when workmen, clearing up after New Year's festivities, decided to incinerate the rubbish inside the building.

An immediate replacement was commissioned from the fashionable architect Inigo Jones. Jones had spent time in Italy studying the architecture evolving from the Renaissance and that of Palladio and returned to England with what at the time were revolutionary ideas: to replace the complicated and confused style of the Jacobean English Renaissance with a simpler, classically inspired design. His new banqueting house at Whitehall was to be a prime example of this. Jones made no attempt to harmonise his design with the Tudor palace of which it was to be part.

Architecture

The design of the Banqueting House is classical in concept, it introduced a refined Italianate Renaissance style that was unparalleled in Jacobean England, where Renaissance motives were still filtered through the engravings of Flemish Mannerist designers. The roof is all but flat and the roofline is a balustrade. On the street facade all the elements of two orders of engaged columns, Corinthian over Ionic, above a high rusticated basement, are locked together in a harmonious whole.

The building is on three floors. The ground floor being a low and rusticated, its small windows, by their size, indicating the lowly status of the floor, above this is the double height banqueting hall, which externally falsely appears as a first floor piano nobile with a secondary floor above. The seven bays of windows divided by Ionic pilasters of the "first floor" are surmounted by alternating triangular and segmental pediments, while the windows of the "second floor" are unadorned casements. Immediately beneath the entablature, which projects to emphasize the central three bays, the capitals of the Corinthian pilasters are linked by swags in relief above which the entablature, crowned by a balustrade is supported by dental corbel table.

Much of the work on the Banqueting house was overseen by Nichols Stone, a Devonshire mason, who had trained in Holland. It has been said that until this time English sculpture resembled that described by the Duchess of Malfi: "the figure cut in alabaster kneels at my husband's tomb." stone who like Jones' was well aware of Florentine art introduced to England, a more delicate classical form of sculpture inspired by Michaelangelo's Medici tombs which is evident in his swags on the street facade of the Banqueting House, similar to that which adorns the plinth of his Francis Holles memorial. All of this was quite new to England.

In 1638, Jones drew the designs for a new and massive palace at Whitehall in which his banqueting house was to be incorporated as one wing enclosing a series of seven courtyards. However, Charles I who commissioned the plans never truly had the resources to execute them, his lack of funds and the tensions that eventually led to the Civil War intervened and the plans were permanently shelved.

The plans of the new palace reveal the ideas behind Jones' concept of Palladianism which is not apparently obvious from viewing the Banqueting House today as one entity. The plans show that it was intended to be one small flanking wing of one bay of a monumental facade.

As it was, architecturally, the Banqueting House was always be to be at odds with its surroundings, in January of 1698 the Tudor Palace was razed by fire, fire engines pumping water from the adjacent River Thames were unable to check the flames which raged for seventeen hours, after which all that remained was the Banqueting House and the Whitehall and Holbein Gates.

Following the fire, Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor were asked to design a new palace, however, nothing ever came of the scheme. It has been said that the widowed William III never cared for the area, but that had his wife Mary II been alive, with her appreciation of the historical significance of Whitehall would have insisted on the rebuilding.

Interior

The term banqueting House was something of a misnomer, the hall within the house was in fact used for not only banqueting, royal receptions, ceremonies, and the performance of masques. The entertainments given here would have been amongst the finest in Europe, for during this period England was considered the leading musical country of Europe, a fact further enhance by the musicians brought from France by Queen Henrietta Maria This period, however, began a slow decline after the death of Orlando Gibbons, who ironically died on a trip to meet the newly married Henrietta Maria and her musicians.

Inside the building is a single two-story double-cube room. The double cube room being another Palladianism, where all proportions were related by a mathematic related in ratio. Thus the length of the room is twice its width and half its height. At second floor height the room is surrounded by what is sometimes mistakenly referred to a minstrels' gallery, while musician may have played from this vantage point, its true purpose was to admit an audience, for at the time of the Banqueting House's construction King's still lived in "splendour and state" which equated to publicly. The less exalted and public would be permitted to crowd the gallery in order to watch the King dine.

James I for whom the Banqueting House was created died in 1625 and was succeeded by his son, the ill fated Charles I. The accession of Charles I heralded a new era in the cultural history of England, the new King was a great patron of the arts - he added to the Royal Collection and encouraged to England the great painters of Europe. In 1623 he had visited Spain where he had been impressed by Titian, Rubens and Velázquez. It became his ambition to find a comparable painter for his own court, Rubens was lured to England with the offer of a knighthood, and it was at this time that the banqueting House ceiling was painted in 1635. The subject commissioned by the King was the glorification of his father, a subject titled the Apotheosis of James I and an allegory of his own birth. To the King's chagrin having finished the ceiling, Rubens took his knighthood and decamped back to Antwerp, leaving Anthony van Dyck, lured not only with a knighthood, but a also pension and a house to remain in England as the court painter. Inigo Jones was later to design another double cube room, this one at Wilton House to display Van Dyck's portraits of the aristocratic Pembroke family.

Architectural Legacy

Unlike in the more southern European countries English architecture went through no period of evolution to classicism, through Jones it arrived, suddenly, and fully formed. Prior to this English architecture has still been based on the styles of the middle ages, albeit for the previous century influenced indirectly by the Italian Renaissance which had resulted in an English renaissance style during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. However, as can be seen at Hatfield House one of England's first purpose built "Renaissance" houses, even during this era, English domestic architecture never quite lost its "castle air."

Thus, through Inigo Jones' work at the Queen's House and the Banqueting House English architecture was transformed. However, the overthrowl of the monarch and establishment of the puritanical Commonwealth, caused the style to be seen as Royalist which delayed its spread, but within a few years of the Restoration almost every English town and village was to have a buildings in the classical styles. The Banqueting House and its features became much copied. A much favoured motif was the placing of pediments above, not only, the focal point of a façade but also its windows. The use of alternating segmental and triangular pediments, an arrangement never before used in England, even though it had been employed by Vasari as early as 1550 at the Medici's Palazzo Uffizi in Florence. Provincial architects began to recreate the motifs of the Banqueting House, with varying degrees of competence throughout England. In the then distant, remote county of Somerset contains three 17th century versions of the Banqueting House: Brympton d'Evercy, Hinton House and Ashton Court.

See also

• Palace of Whitehall

Notes

1. While the Queen's House at Greenwich is often referred to as as England's first classical building, its delayed completion was not until 1635, some thirteen years after the completion of the banqueting House. Halliday, p149.
2. Coppelstone, p. 835.
3. William, p. 47
4. Images of England: Banqueting House, English Heritage, retrieved 2008-02-29
5. Williams, p 45
6. Williams. p45.
7. Halliday, p154
8. Williams, p50.
9. williams, p50.
10. Great Buildings
11. Halliday, p156.
12. Halliday
13. Halliday, p152.
14. Halliday, p152.
15. Halliday, p148
16. Coppelstone, p.249.
17. Dunning, p21

References

• Robert Dunning, Somerset Country Houses. 1991. The Dovecote Press Ltd. Wimborne, Dorset.

• The Department for the Environment (1983). The Banqueting House Whitehall. Her Majesty's Stationery Office. ISBN 0-86056-106-2.

• Halliday, E. E. (1967). Cultural History of England. London: Thames & Hudson.

• Williams, Neville (1971). Royal Homes. Lutterworth Press. ISBN 0-7188-0803-7

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bg:Банкетна къща ca:Casa del Banquet de:Banqueting House es:Banqueting House fr:Maison des banquets he:בית הסעודות ka:საბანკეტო სახლი ja:バンケティング・ハウス no:Banqueting House sv:Banqueting House

Facts from the old WP page that I may use if a ref can be found and they seem needed

The Undercroft was originally designed as a drinking den for James I and a place where he could escape the rigours of public life. The King would come here to savour a glass of wine from his extensive cellars, or simply enjoy some private time with his favourite courtiers.

• Historic Royal Palaces -- Banqueting House
• The Banqueting House at the Survey of London
• Great Buildings website
• View of Whitehall in 1669, showing the Banqueting House and Holbein Gateway

No, don't worry dean I asked him to - it's OK. Thanks Jack. When is this silly situation die to expire - anyone know? Giano (talk) 14:57, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The block will expire in about four hours. Jehochman 14:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh how exiting - what a releif for everyone. Giano (talk) 15:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

May I recommend...

K-Meleon? It's relatively similar to IE (assuming that's what you use), more lightweight than FireBloat, and I've never had it had it lose the contents of a text box on me. --NE2 16:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I donn't know, but whenever I have a conflict or anything like that it always says your text is here or there, yet it never is - never ever ever. Plus the fact i always have wikipedia open twice and it's always the oneI have fiddled with ongest that gets lost - perhaps I am just an exxentric editor! My mind does not seem to work like other peoples. :-( Giano (talk) 16:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Your block

Your 72 hour block has been reset after some obvious evasion by IP number editing. This is usual procedure after block evasion.

This matter has been discussed by the ArbCom. The decision was not unanimous. Some dissenting comments will be added here, shortly.

I'd like to add some comments of my own. Your editing is appreciated. In our discussion, some technical matters weer raised, and they are offered here entirely in a helpful spirit. You can draft your excellent articles without ever saving them here, by using preview, and then copying all the wikitext across into a word processor. This copying procedure is also very useful, anyway, for anyone who like you drafts in longer editing sessions. This whole business is very unfortunate, and blew up it seems because you lost work through no one's actual fault. For myself, the old days still loom large, and I copy the text (very often) onto the clipboard before doing a big save. In fact working with a word processor open is an old habit (the servers regularly used to swallow my edits).

Well, I hope this helps. At least in future I hope we shall all get along better. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)