inigo jones's catafalque for james i

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Inigo Jones's Catafalque for James IAuthor(s): John PeacockSource: Architectural History, Vol. 25 (1982), pp. 1-5+134-135Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568405 .

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Ini8o Jones's catafalque for

James I by JOHN PEACOCK

When Inigo Jones designed the catafalque for James I's funeral in I625 (P1. 2) what he produced was a version of Bramante's Tempietto (P1. 3a), that key work in the canon of Renaissance architecture which is also a kind of funerary monument, since it commemo- rates the martyrdom of St Peter. This derivation has already been recognized; what has not been discussed is the fact that Jones's design draws on a recent tradition of tempietto- catafalques, and is particularly close to that designed by Domenico Fontana in I 5 9 for the obsequies of Sixtus V (P1. 3b). Comparing the two, we see that Jones's dome is derived closely from Fontana's and his two principal statues are copied almost exactly. The idea of scrolls along the ribs of the dome comes from Fontana at one remove, from the adaptation of his design made by Sergio Venturi in i622 for the obsequies of Paul V (P1. 3c).1

We also see Jones looking back beyond Bramante to the antique architecture which inspired the Tempietto. The basement on which the catafalque stands and the steps leading up to it - especially the graphic convention used to represent them - are strongly reminiscent of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli as illustrated in Palladio's Fourth Book (P1. 3d).2

The Tempietto therefore figures in Jones's design not just as an isolated classic pattern but as a building with a distinct, indeed unique, historical character. Palladio, in judging it worthy to be placed among the works of the ancients, had confirmed its ideal status above the mere historical development of modern architecture; but this very status laid it open to emulation and adaptation, and delivered it straight back into the flux of history. Jones's consciousness of this can be seen in the use he makes of Domenico Fontana's adaptation of Bramante. He frankly borrows from Fontana's design but also revises it quite severely: by confronting the latter's inflated and bedizened version of the Tempietto with the 'masculine and unaffected' purity of the original he draws it back in style towards the High Renaissance, re-classicizes it as it were. The crucial revision is the restoration of Bramante's Doric order, which Jones has recomposed in an enriched form with some reference to Scamozzi.3

However, Jones's use of his sources here is not simply to be explained in terms of a certain academic purism. His design relates to a context of ideas. What this context is we can begin to grasp by observing that the engraving of Fontana's catafalque came to Jones not as a visual document on its own but as part of a commemorative funeral book with lengthy commentary.4 Part of this commentary concerns the catafalque as a work of architecture, and in a dual sense. This is unusual in that during this period funeral catafalques, although often designed by architects, did not necessarily have a wholly



2 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 25: 1982

architectural character. A common sixteenth-century type descended from Charles V's obsequies in Brussels:5 a baldacchino surmounted by a pyramid of lights; this semi- architectural conception was especially prevalent in Florence.6 A more fully architectural type seems to emerge in Rome towards the end of the century: this is the tempietto type. Although it does not seem to have been invented by Domenico Fontana7 it came to be used by him with special cogency.

Baldo Catani, the author of Sixtus V's funeral book, explains the concetto of the catafalque: it is a work of architecture in itself ('in forma di bellissimo tempio') whose crowning storey either incorporates or refers to all the celebrated architectural projects undertaken by the Pope and Fontana: so it incorporates the dome of St Peter's which Sixtus completed, the columns of Trajan and Antoninus which he restored, the four obelisks which he erected; and it carries pictures of the Lateran Palace, the Sistine Chapel in S. Maria Maggiore, and other works.8 The single form which acts as a matrix for all these components is an allusive adaptation of a major work by an earlier 'building' Pope and his chief architect, Julius II and Bramante, a work designed to commemorate the death of the first Pope, St Peter. And this theme of papal self-glorification through funeral architecture is carried on in Venturi's catafalque for Paul V, which evidently imitates and tries to outdo Fontana, and in the same church, S. Maria Maggiore, where Paul V had built a chapel rivalling that of Sixtus.

At the very outset of Jones's career, in i6o6, the architectural achievements of Sixtus V's reign had been pointed out to him as a source of inspiration, when Edmund Bolton presented him with a flatteringly inscribed copy of Bordino's De Rebus Praeclare Gestis a Sixto V.9 Now in i62 5, when he had been Surveyor for a decade, the message of the Pope's funeral book cannot have been lost on him: the idea of using a funeral catafalque as a sort of architectural summing-up of the reign, and a means of celebrating the relationship between ruler and architect.

He was not a novice in catafalque design, although we cannot be certain whether his first opportunity came with the death of Prince Henry (i612) or Queen Anne (I619). Prince Henry's hearse shows a traditional English pattern, with emphasis on the funeral effigy and on heraldry, adapted in the direction of Florentine models10 - which may mean it is by Costantino de' Servi and not Jones. We do know that Jones was responsible for Anne of Denmark's hearse, and the one surviving drawing which seems related to that project suggests the semi-architectural, baldacchino type of catafalque, using mannerist caryatids rather than the classical orders.'1 Six years later, for the King's catafalque, we have a fully architectural conception, a work of Jones's mature classicism.12 It follows Fontana's precedent of the catafalque as an architectural summation, but the summation is on a more abstract level. There is an exposition not of accumulated practical achievements but of carefully evolved theoretical principles, principles of harmony and proportion.13 And the tempietto form, instead of an emblematic vehicle for ideas of papal authority, becomes more intrinsically an embodiment of those principles.

For the subtilization of Fontana's idea is part and parcel of translating it from a language which is Catholic and papal into one which is Protestant and monarchic. We can see this translation being made first of all on the extrinsic level of the allegorical programme. In Great Britains Salomon, the funeral sermon preached by Bishop Williams over the hearse, we are told that the four statues standing round it represent Religion,



INIGO JONES'S CATAFALQUE FOR JAMES i

Justice, War and Peace.14 Of the two which appear in Jones's drawing, the one on the left is obviously Religion, copied from the figure identified by Catani as Cristiana Religione, except that her attributes of a church, books and a crucifix are changed for a flaming altar. The other figure is, in the original, Papal Authority, representing a supreme power of jurisdiction even over kings, as Catani makes clear;15 Jones has omitted her attributes of a yoke and the keys of St Peter, leaving only the vestige of her sceptre, to be changed either into the caduceus of Peace or the sword of Justice. On a more intrinsic level he has translated architectural grandiosity and ingenuity into rational harmony, harmony which may be perceived as a symbol of the metaphysical reality of Divine Right.16

To enter further into the context of ideas relevant to Jones's design we have only to consider Bishop Williams's funeral sermon. The neo-classical style of the catafalque emphasizes the idea of the King as a modern monarch in whom antique virtue is reborn, an idea central to Williams's expatiation of the familiar comparison of James to Solomon. Here we are in the area of that synthesis of Biblical and pagan antiquity so characteristic of Renaissance thought; for example, in a reference to the Historia Augusta, Williams compares the resuscitation of Solomon's greatness in 'our British Solomon' to the posthumous triumph awarded by Hadrian to Trajan, where the honours were paid to an effigy of the dead emperor.17

Most accounts of rulers' obsequies in the period we are discussing tend to see them, or aspects of them, in terms of antique funeral practices, especially Roman. So in the printed account of Cosimo I's funeral in Florence in I5 74 his catafalque was compared to the pyramid of Cestius,18 while during the lying in state of Francesco I in 15 87 we read that pages in attendance waved fans 'as at the funeral of the Emperor Pertinax'.19 The obsequies of Charles IX of France resembled in part those of a Roman emperor, as Sir Henry Savile pointed out in his translation of Tacitus's Histories.20 We can see how ingrained was this way of thinking by comparing the comments of successive Venetian ambassadors about the funerals of Prince Henry and King James. In 1612 Antonio Foscarini reported that the catafalque 'was raised in the form of a pyramid',21 where a more medievally-minded Englishman might merely have seen not a pyramid but a canopy rather like that over the hearse of Sir Philip Sidney in I587.22 In i625 Zuane Pesaro, who failed to attend the funeral but evidently received a very detailed report of it, wrote that the choristers wore garments 'after the antique Roman fashion'.23

Jones must certainly have been familiar with this way of thinking. In Lelio Guidic- cioni's funeral book for Paul V, which he undoubtedly referred to for its engraving of the catafalque, he could have read a long account of a dispute which divided the Sacred Congregation of Rites in the later sixteenth century, about the propriety of using catafalques for papal obsequies, given that this was an extravagant neo-pagan practice; apparently Sixtus V's was erected only after considerable opposition.24 There were Renaissance treatises on the funeral rites of the ancients, especially the imperial Roman practice of apotheosis,25 containing repeated references to standard classical literary sources: Herodian on the funeral and apotheosis of Septimius Severus, Dio Cassius on Augustus and Pertinax.26

We know that Jones possessed an Italian translation of Dio Cassius,27 although this text did not contain the later books which survive only in the epitome of Xiphilinus.

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ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 25: I982

However, two annotations in Jones's Palladio reveal that he had consulted Antoine

Canque's French translation of Xiphilinus,28 where he could have read this in the account of the funeral of Pertinax:

On bastit dans la place publique de Rome un haut chantier de bois qui estoit de couleur grisastre: au dessus fut dresse un certain edifice qui n'estoit ceinct ny entoure d'aucune autre closture que d'un grand nombre de colofies . . .29

This would help to explain why Jones's tempietto rises from a platform, a feature not found in any of his visual sources. When we read in Williams's sermon:

I beseech you to remember in Herodian and Xiphiline what costly beds the Emperors lay in when in their apotheosis they were to be burn't and changed to Gods,30

it seems even more probable that the loci classici concerning imperial Roman funerals received Jones's consideration, especially in view of the evidence of consultation between the two men about the statues round the catafalque. Classical and Renaissance literary sources may well have played their part along with classical and Renaissance architectural sources in the evolution of Jones's design.

The consultation between preacher and architect over the statues was clearly not a perfunctory matter - a long and elaborate section of Great Britains Salomon is based on it. How much further they consulted we cannot be sure, but there are indications: for example, Williams in speaking of Solomon's tomb gives a marginal reference to Serlio,31 a reference that could have been supplied by Jones. It would be exaggerated to imagine here the sort of collaboration that Jones had with Jonson over the court masques, but there is at least something of that in the relation of Williams's text and Jones's solemn spectacle; and the masques are not an inappropriate background against which to see the catafalque. For in the end Jones's design is, like Fontana's, a synthesis, but of a more general kind; it resembles those syntheses of forms and motifs which we see in the imaginary architecture for the masques, where Jones is staging the unfamiliar repertory of Renaissance art before the eyes of his countrymen.32

NOTES

In preparing this article I was not able to consult Olga Berendson, The Italian Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- century Catafalques, New York University Ph.D. thesis, I96I. Having eventually obtained a copy (University Microfilms, 1976) I must acknowledge her prior discovery of Jones's use of Fontana (p. I22, note 266). In her brief comments she wrongly dates James I's funeral in i623, and implies that Jones was a 'provincial designer' - the present discussion obviously has a different emphasis. i Engraving by Theodor Krueger in Lelio Guidiccioni, Breve Racconto della Trasportatione del Papa Paolo V(Rome, I623). 2 Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (Venice, 1570), Book iv, p. 92. One further source, which stands in a purely practical relationship to Jones's design, should be noted: the arrangement by which 'the columns are pressed back against their respondent pilasters' (Summerson) is taken from an illustration of a circular temple in G. A. Rusconi, Della Architettura (Venice, 1590), Libro Secondo, p. 36. 3 Cf. especially the dentils in the cornice; L'Idea della Architettura Universale, 2 vols (Venice, I6I5), Parte Seconda, Libro Sesto, p. 84, 'Ornamento del Ordine Dorico'. 4 Baldo Catani, La Pompa Funerale ... di Papa Sisto ilQuinto (Rome, 159 1). 5 See Jaynie Anderson, '"Le roi ne meurt jamais": Charles V's Obsequies in Italy', El Cardenal Albornozy el Colegio de Espana (V), Studia Albornotiana XXV (Bologna, 1979), pp. 379-99. 6 See exhibition catalogueLaScenadelPrincipe (Florence, 1980), nos. 8.14, 8.2I, 8.48, 8.52.

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INIGO JONES'S CATAFALQUE FOR JAMES i

7 See for example Antonio Brambilla's engraving of the catafalque of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese in 1589, reproduced in M. Fagiolo dell' Arco and S. Carandini, L' Effimero Barocco, 2 vols (Rome, I977-78), II, pl. 54. 8 Catani, pp. 17, I9-20.

9 J. A. Gotch, Inigo Jones (i928), p. 25 1. J. Harris, S. Orgel and R. Strong, in The King's Arcadia (I973), p. 64, point out that Jones's scene-painter Matthew Goodericke owned a copy of Domenico Fontana's book on the erection of the Vatican obelisk; this was also a celebratory account of the building works of Sixtus V, its full title being Della Trasportatione Dell' Obelisco Vaticano Et Delle Fabriche Di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V (Rome, 15 90)

o See William Hole's engraving reproduced in A. M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Part II, The Reign of James I (I 95 5), pl. 200.

I I J. Harris, Catalogue of the DrawingsCollection ofthe RIBA. InigoJones andJohn Webb (1972), no. 92, fig. 91. 12 For the lying in state at Denmark House before the funeral Jones may well have designed a different, more old-fashioned type of catafalque. J. Harris in Catalogue of the Drawings by Inigo Jones, John Wlebb and Isaac de Caus at Worcester College Oxford (i 979), p. 21, quotes Aubrey's report of a 'canopy' with '4 heads of caryatids' and 'drapery of white calico'. This sounds Florentine, in fact like a version of the catafalque of Franceso I as engraved by Theodor Krueger: see La Scena del Principe, 8.21. I 3 For example, the height of the peristyle is equal to the diameter of the drum, and to the height of the dome measured from above the blocking-course to the top of the crown; the height of the drum to the top of the blocking-course is half this measurement. 14 John Williams, Bishop of Norwich, Great Britains Salomon. A Sermon Preached at the Magnificent Funerall, of the most high and mighty King, James (1625), p. 45. 15 Catani, pp. 35-36 and pp. 40-43. i6 Gordon Toplis, 'The Sources of Jones's Mind and Imagination', in The King's Arcadia, p. 6 1. 17 Williams, p. 36. 18 Descritione della Pompa Funerale Fatta nelle Essequie del Ser.m? Sig. Cosimo de AMedici Gran Duca di Toscana (Florence, 1 574), sig. Eiir. 19 G. B. Strozzi, Essequie del Serenissimo Don Francesco Medici Gran Duca di Toscana II (Florence, 1 587), pp. 8-9. 20 Henry Savile, The End of Nero and Beginning of Galba, Foure Bookes of the Histories of Cornelius Tacitus, fifth edn (i622), p. 4. Cf. Memoires de l'Estat de France, sous Charles Neufiesme, 3 vols, second edn (Middle- burg, I 579), III, fols 270r-270v. 2 1 Calendar of State Papers Venetian, 16io0-1613, p. 468. 22 See the engraving by Theodor de Bry, reproduced in A. M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Part I, The Tudor Period (I 952), pl. 6i. 23 Calendar of State Papers Venetian, I 62y-I626, p. 5 5. 24 Guidiccioni, pp. I4-I6. 25 For example L. G. Giraldi, De Sepulchris et vario sepeliendi ritu, libellus (Basel, 1539); T. Porcacchi, Funerali Antichi di Diversi popoli et nationi (Venice, 15 74); C. Guichard, Funerailles & diverses manieres d' ensevelir des Rommains, Grecs, & autres nations (Lyons, I 581). 26 Herodian, iv. 2.I-II; Dio Cassius, lvi. 34, 42; lxxv. 4.2-5.5. 27 The King's Arcadia, p. 217. 28 See Inigo Jones on Palladio, ed. Bruce Allsopp, 2 vols (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1970), annotations on Quattro Libri, iv, pp. 23 and 25; I am grateful to John Newman for these references. The relevant annotation on p. 25, 'This tempell [of Nerva Traiano] was made by Apolodorus se Xifilin in ye life of Adrian fo.238' (partly mistranscribed by Allsopp, II, p. 44), makes it clear that Jones must be referring to L'Histoire de Dion Cassius . .. abbregee par Xiphilin. Translatee . . .par M. Antoyne Canque (Paris, 1 588). 29 Canque, fol. 288r. The same passage from Xiphilinus occurs in the funeral treatises of Porcacchi, p. 29, and Guichard, pp. 176-77. 30 Williams, p. 35. 31 Williams, p. 8. 32 See my article, 'Inigo Jones's Stage Architecture and Its Sources', The Art Bulletin, June 1982.

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P1. 2 Inigo Jones, Design for the catafalque of James I, r62J (Worcester College, Oxford)

OPPOSITE P1. 3a Bramante's Tempietto, from A. Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, Book IV, p. 66 (Inigo Jones's copy). Rephotographedfrom Inigo Jones on Palladio

P1. 3b Domenico Fontana, Catafalque for Sixtus V, from B. Catani, La Pompa Funerale di Papa Sisto il Quinto (z/yz), p. 24

P1. 3c Sergio Venturi, Catafalque for Paul V, from L. Guidiccioni, Breve Racconto della Trasportatione del Papa Paolo V (1623)

P1. 3d Temple of Vesta, Tivoli,from A. Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, Book IV, p. 92 (Inigo Jones's copy). Rephotographed from Inigo Jones on Palladio



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