Banqueting House
1. The Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house, and one of the few survived works of Inigo Jones. The building is important in the history of English architecture as the foundation of the Neoclassicism of the 18th century. Begun in 1619, in a style influenced by Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622, 27 years before King Charles I of England was executed on a scaffold in front of itin January 1649.
2. Above
3. Returning to England with the ideology he learnt from the architecture evolving from the Italian Renaissance and that of Palladio, Inigo Jones was 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 harmonize his design with the Tudor palace of which it was to be part.
4. The design of the Banqueting House is classical in concept. The roof is all flat and the roofline is a balustrade. On the street façade, all the elements of the two orders are of engaged columns, Corinthian over Ionic, above a high rusticated basement, and are interlocked in a harmonious whole. The building is on three floors. The ground floor, a warren of cellars and store rooms, is low; its small windows indicating by their size the lowly status and usage of the floor, above which is the double-height banqueting hall, which falsely appears from the outside as a first-floor piano nobile with a secondary floor above. The seven bays of windows 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. Under the upper frieze, festoons and masks suggest the feasting and revelry associated with the concept of a royal banqueting hall.
5. Inside the building is a single two-story double-cube room. The double cube room is again, Palladianism, where all proportions are mathematically related. Thus the length of the room is twice its equal width and height. Charles I lured famous painters with knighthood to come paint for him. The Banqueting House ceiling was then painted in 1635. The subject was the glorification of his father, and was an allegory of his own birth.
1. The Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house, and one of the few survived works of Inigo Jones. The building is important in the history of English architecture as the foundation of the Neoclassicism of the 18th century. Begun in 1619, in a style influenced by Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622, 27 years before King Charles I of England was executed on a scaffold in front of itin January 1649.
2. Above
3. Returning to England with the ideology he learnt from the architecture evolving from the Italian Renaissance and that of Palladio, Inigo Jones was 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 harmonize his design with the Tudor palace of which it was to be part.
4. The design of the Banqueting House is classical in concept. The roof is all flat and the roofline is a balustrade. On the street façade, all the elements of the two orders are of engaged columns, Corinthian over Ionic, above a high rusticated basement, and are interlocked in a harmonious whole. The building is on three floors. The ground floor, a warren of cellars and store rooms, is low; its small windows indicating by their size the lowly status and usage of the floor, above which is the double-height banqueting hall, which falsely appears from the outside as a first-floor piano nobile with a secondary floor above. The seven bays of windows 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. Under the upper frieze, festoons and masks suggest the feasting and revelry associated with the concept of a royal banqueting hall.
5. Inside the building is a single two-story double-cube room. The double cube room is again, Palladianism, where all proportions are mathematically related. Thus the length of the room is twice its equal width and height. Charles I lured famous painters with knighthood to come paint for him. The Banqueting House ceiling was then painted in 1635. The subject was the glorification of his father, and was an allegory of his own birth.
