| Popis: |
Perhaps the clearest expression of the Stuart Court 'self-image' is to be found on the Banqueting House ceiling, where James is represented as Solomon; an antique Britain is characterised in the form of James's mythic ancestors, the first Christian King Lucius and the founder of a united Great Britain, Trojan Brute. Here, the past is seen to bear witness to the present, the restored Golden Age inaugurated by James's reign. The Jones-Webb survey of Stonehenge, commissioned by James around 1620, is concluded with the above figures of Cherubim and Astrology. The 'most notable antiquity of Great Britain', as the monument is entitled, becomes an analogue of Solomon's temple and the new Jerusalem heralded by Stuart rule finds physical expression on Salisbury plain. Here the stones are moulded into the general antique virtue represented by the Vitruvian theatre plan, a circle and triangles, the geometrical forms of neoplatonism; transformed in this way Stonehenge becomes a crumbling monument of the 'Albion and Jerusalem' antiquity pictured on the Banqueting House ceiling. The Stuart Court's understanding of itself and its architecture as a 'restoration' of this antique British culture will be examined in the first part of this study with reference to the intended centre-piece of Stuart London, Jones' 'restored' St. Paul's Cathedral. This will suggest connections with the Jones-Webb 'restoration' of Stonehenge, a link examined in the second part. For such links, in conclusion, made Jones's work verifiably British in origin, a thesis which will obviously question the traditional understanding of Stuart architecture as having derived its primary inspiration from Jones's Italian travels. The origins of British Palladianism are uncovered on Salisbury Plain. |
