Queen's House
The Queen’s House captures an early shift in English taste: it is the first consciously classical building constructed in Britain. Inigo Jones designed it, and the project began in 1616, reaching completion in the following decades, with building work running from 1616 to 1635. Jones had returned from a 1613 to 1615 grand tour of Roman, Renaissance, and Palladian architecture in Italy—this was his first major English commission after that trip. For Charles I’s queen, Henrietta Maria, the house functioned as a royal retreat and an art setting for works the queens had commissioned. In the Great Hall, the ceiling featured a painted ceiling work by Orazio Gentileschi titled *Allegory of Peace and the Arts*. Architecturally, the building’s “perfect cube” Great Hall and the Tulip Stairs—an intricate wrought-iron stair—help explain why Jones is often linked with the introduction of Palladianism. …
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