J IS FOR INIGO JONES

                                                                  (1573 - 1652)    
     Before Inigo Jones came on the scene, the word "architecture," to Europeans, meant only "Italian architecture." Who could ever dare to compete with the classical Greeks and Romans?  Jones changed all that by making his mark as the first major British architect in the modern world.  And what is particularly interesting about him is that, in ultra-class-conscious Britain, he rose, solely through his own merit, from the humblest of beginnings as the son of a Welsh cloth-maker to become a consultant to kings.  Given the overwhelming societal pressures in those days to keep the lower classes in their place, such real-life rags-to-riches stories were almost unheard of (although as anyone who's read Hilary Mantel's magnificent WOLF HALL knows, Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell was another member of that very small club).  So anyway, even though Jones spent only the first third of his life in the 16th century, I hope you'll agree that he was remarkable enough for me to include in my A to Z roster.
     Very little is known about Jones's early life, but commentators seem to agree that, sponsored by some wealthy patron, he must have visited Italy within a year or two either before or after the turn of the 17th century.  The strongest evidence of this journey is the fact that Jones learned to speak Italian fluently at about this time, and the fact that he acquired a four-volume Italian-language architecture treatise byAndrea Palladio, one of the most gifted contemporary Italian architects.  Since Jones appeared in the household records of the Earl of Rutland in 1603 as "Henygo Jones, a picture maker," it seems likely that the Earl may have been the one who had subsidized his first trip abroad.  While in Italy, Jones acquired the patronage of King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway, and relocated to his court for a time before returning to England.
     Beginning in 1605, Jones began staging theatrical performances in London for which he designed the sets and costumes.  That was the year when Queen Anne, wife of James I of England (and also, perhaps not coincidentally, the sister of Jones's patron Christian IV), first hired Jones to stage a masque (a form of entertainment in which costumed and masked performers arrive at a party, mingle with the guests, and then perform a ceremonial dance) at court.  Anne must have been pleased with his work, because he continued to design masques for her, and later (after she died) for the king, until 1641.  Over 450 drawings for these designs still exist, and demonstrate Jones's skill as a draftsman.

     Although he began designing architectural works before 1610, he continued his theatrical work, often in contentious collaboration with the playwright Ben Jonson (apparently the two of them bickered constantly), for another 30 years.
     In 1608 Jones was commissioned by Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, to create his first known architectural design, for the New Exchange in the Strand.  Around that same time, Jones produced some designs for the restoration and improvement of Old Saint Paul's Cathedral, although these were later superseded.  In 1610 Jones was awarded the post of surveyor of works for Henry, the heir to the throne, but Jones did not produce any notable designs for Henry before the prince died in 1612.
     The following year, the King's surveyor of works died, and the job was promised to Jones, who was permitted to take a second trip to Italy before stepping into his new assignment.  During the leisurely 18 months he spent in Italy from 1613 to 1614, he studied both ancient ruins and the architectural works of modern masters, Palladio in particular.  By the time Jones returned to England, he had transformed himself from a provincial British set designer to a true classical architect.
     From 1615 to 1643, Jones was the surveyor of works first for King James, and then for his successor King Charles.  His major works included the royal Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace(1619-22),

the Queen's House (a work begun for Queen Anne, suspended when she died in 1619, and completed in 1635 for King Charles's wife),

and a piazza at Covent Garden, which became the first London square.

 

      The Earl of Bedford, who had commissioned the square at Covent Garden, felt obliged to include a church (St. Paul's) in it but didn't want to spend a lot of money doing so.  He instructed Jones just to build "a barn," and Jones famously replied that the Earl would have "the finest barn in Europe."

     In later years (1633-42), Jones also worked on the restoration of Old St. Paul's Cathedral, although tragically, the building was severely damaged during the English Civil Wars (1642-51) and then, before it could be repaired, was destroyed altogether in the Great Fire of London (1666).

     The outbreak of the Civil Wars and the seizure of the King's properties more or less ended Jones's career.  He lost his royal post, fled from London, and was captured and fined.  A year later he was pardoned and his estate was returned to him, but he never really recovered from the trauma.  He continued to work, but designed no important buildings.  Jones, who had never married, died in 1652 and was buried with his parents.  He is remembered for being the first person to import the concepts of classical architecture to England, inspiring Christopher Wren and generations of others.

 



I IS FOR ESTHER INGLIS

                                                                 (1571 - 1624)

     Esther Inglis was raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, by parents who were Protestant refugees from France (her surname is an Anglicized version of her father's, Langlois).  Her father was  Master of the French School in Edinburgh, and her mother was a calligrapher.  Like a small number of  European daughters of forward-thinking, well-educated parents, Inglis was given a good home-school education; she was probably taught the humanities by her father, and calligraphy by her mother.  In 1596 she married Batholomew Kello, who was a clergyman but who also worked as a clerk for James VI's Scottish court.  The couple moved to London by 1604 when James became king of England, and returned to Edinburgh in 1615, remaining there for the rest of Inglis's life.  They had six children, four of whom survived to adulthood.
     At a young age, Inglis had begun producing books; the texts were transcriptions of religious works, beautifully hand-written and illustrated.  After her marriage, she served as a scribe for Kello in his court-related work, but continued to produce her own books, eventually earning a reputation as one of the finest calligraphers in the British Isles.  In addition to creating lovely borders and illustrations, she also embroidered some of her books' covers with silver and gold thread and adorned them with seed pearls. 

     One of her specialties was producing as novelty items miniature volumes - about sixty in total, records show - each one two or three inches square, with the same kind of masterful illustrations as in the larger books but pared down in size as if to flaunt her expertise.  Another razzle-dazzle trick of hers was to use a different handwriting for each page of a book.  Inglis always signed her work, and often included self-portraits within them.  This was a woman who did not suffer from a lack of self-confidence.
     As you might imagine, marketing in the 16th-century wasn't quite as sophisticated as it is now, but Inglis and her husband were tireless entrepreneurs.  Reading about Inglis gives one the feeling that if she were alive today, she would be all over every form of social media and maybe even thinking up a few new forms on her own.  Inglis's practice was to dedicate each completed volume to a wealthy and/or powerful and/or royal person whom she didn't personally know, and her husband, acting as her publicist, would deliver them and hope for acceptance and payment from the recipients.  ("Hi!  Are Will and Kate home?  When do you think they'll be back?")  Often the books would include flattering letters and poems written by Kello in praise of the donees, signing himself as the "husband of the book's adorner."  After 1605, Inglis began making these unsolicited deliveries herself to the homes of the well-connected (generally Protestant) Londoners to whom she chose to dedicate the books.
     From 1607 until 1614, Inglis appears to have produced a total of only eight books.  This period coincided with the time when her husband was employed as rector of a church in Essex, which might suggest that the couple felt they no longer had to rely on her calligraphy income.  But although Inglis's work was very highly regarded during her lifetime, she died in debt.  Sad, right?  After all that hard work?  Ah, but we know what Robert Burns, Inglis's  fellow Scotsman, had to say about the best-laid plans of mice and men...

H IS FOR HUZZAH! IT'S SAYYIDA AL HURRA!

     Folks, when I promise a pirate queen, I deliver a pirate queen - and when I say queen, I'm referring to an actual Royal.  Allow me to present to you the one, the only, Sayyida al Hurra bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami, Hakimat Titwan (also spelled Tetouan).  She looks awfully demure in the painting above, but she was one of a kind.
     Sayyida was born about 1485 to a well-to-do Muslim family living in Granada, which was then a Muslim emirate.  But in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain conquered Granada, murdering or enslaving up to 100,000 Muslims and forcing another 20,000 to flee.  Sayyida's family was among those who escaped with their lives.  They ended up in Morocco.
     At age 16 Sayyida was married to a friend of her father's who was then in his mid-forties.  They ruled Tetouan (a region at the very northern tip of Morocco) as partners, gradually reconstructing the city which had been destroyed in 1490.  After her husband died in 1515, Sayyida declared herself the governor of Tetouan, thus becoming the last Muslim woman to assume the title "al hurrah" - queen.  At some point after that she got married again, this time to the King of Morocco.  But just to make sure he knew where things stood between them, she made him travel to Tetouan to marry her, rather than vice versa.  It was the only time in history that a Moroccan king got married outside of Fez, the capital.
     It bears noting that Sayyida al Hurra is a title, not a given name, and it means "noble lady who is free and independent."  The primary way she demonstrated that independence was in her method of avenging herself against the Christians of Spain and Portugal, whom she held responsible for her family's being forced to flee Granada when she was a child.  Some time around the year 1515 (the same year her first husband died and she assumed the solo governorship - which seems to suggest that he was holding her in check while he was alive), she reached out to Barbarossa (literally, "Redbeard" in Italian) of Algiers, a Turkish pirate who, along with his two brothers, ruthlessly controlled sea travel throughout the eastern Mediterranean.  Evidently Sayyida and Barbarossa reached an agreement, and Sayyida enthusiastically entered the pirate's life, assembling her own fleet and wreaking havoc on Spanish and Portuguese trade.  She became the ruler of the western Mediterranean region, accepted as the boss by Muslims and Christians alike, and was the person with whom the release of Spanish and Portuguese captives had to be negotiated. To great Portuguese humiliation, in 1520 one of those captives was the wife of the Portuguese governor.  I'll admit Sayyida may never have personally attacked a ship, but still, it's the thought that counts.   She was an extremely bold and successful pirate, and used all of the booty and ransom money acquired to restore and beautify Tetouan, making her very popular with the people she governed.
     Sayyida remained the ruler of Tetouan until 1542, when she was forcefully deposed by what is described as her son-in-law, but (because I could not find any mention of her ever having had children) to me sounds more like her stepson, the son of the Moroccan king.  Immediately she lost all her wealth and power, and disappeared from historical accounts.  It was the ultimate reversal of fortune, and no one knows what became of her.
     On the other hand, since Sayyida's death has never been reported, maybe she's still out there somewhere on the open sea, buckling her swash (??), gleefully plundering European ships and generally raising hell.  I'd like to think so.  Wouldn't you?

    

G IS FOR KONRAD GESNER

                                                                  (1516 - 1565)

     Honestly, I'm not at all sure how to categorize Gesner.  Some of the people I've been posting about make it easy: painter, midwife, astronomer.  Gesner is not one of those people.  He's often referred to as a naturalist, but if I had to categorize him, it might actually be as a categorizer!  Essentially, he created exhaustive databases compiled through laborious research, which he conducted both hands-on and through information received from his huge number of correspondents located around the world.  Had he lived in our century, he would have invented the first Internet search engine.  Living as he did in the 16th century, he did the very best he could with the tools available to him, and his very best was nothing short of astounding.
     For a thumbnail sketch of this man, I couldn't hope to do better than Daniel Boorstin, former Librarian of Congress and ongoing Knower of Everything, so I'm just going to quote this paragraph from p. 427 of his book, THE DISCOVERERS:

          These opportunities (voyages to the New World) inspired a new generation
           of encyclopedists of nature. The most remarkable of them, Konrad Gesner,
           had a genius for grafting the new onto the old. Prodigiously learned in
           several languages, Gesner was torn between what he had read and what he
           saw. He was born into a poor Zurich family in 1516, educated himself as
           a vagrant scholar, and, when he was only twenty, wrote a Greek-Latin
           dictionary. In the next thirty years he turned out seventy volumes on
           every conceivable subject. His monumental Bibliotheca Universalis (4
           vols., 1545-1555) aimed to provide a catalogue of all writings that had
           ever existed in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Gesner listed eighteen hundred
           authors and titles of their works in manuscript and in print, with summaries
           of their content. Thus he earned his title as the Father of Bibliography.
           What cartography was to explorers on land and sea, bibliography would
           be to libraries.

     If by any chance your mind is not yet blown, I'll now go on to tell you about his five-volume Historia Animalium, which, in Boorstin's words, "supplied everything known, speculated, imagined, or reported about all known animals."  Gesner divided the animal kingdom into quadrupeds, amphibians, birds, fishes and snakes.  Because he was being as inclusive as he could with this catalogue, it featured some animals with which you or I might not be particularly familiar:

     But truly - the last thing I want to do is mock Gesner.  If he didn't know for a fact that a particular creature didn't exist, he included it just in case it did.  (Fun fact: the Historia Amimalium  made it onto the Church's list of Banned Books.  Was it, perhaps, because he included mermaids, unicorns and basilisks?  Nah.  It was because he was Protestant!)   Gesner's approach to every academic subject was far beyond thorough.  Which reminds me - Did I mention that he was primarily a botanist?  And, oh yeah - also a physician.  And a mountain climber.  If he wasn't the guy for whom the term "Renaissance man" was coined, he gets my vote for the title.
     Gesner's education wasn't quite as haphazard as Boorstin suggests; his intelligence was so apparent to all his teachers that at an early age he acquired some important sponsors who supported him financially and put him through top universities.  At the age of 21 Gesner became a professor of Greek at the Academy of Lausanne.  The steady income enabled him to devote time to studying botany.  After teaching at Lausanne for three years, he left to attend medical school at the world-renowned University of Montpelier in France.  He received his degree in 1541, when he was 25, and relocated to Zurich to practice medicine and to teach physics at the Collegium Carolinum, the precursor to the University of Zurich.  In 1554 he became the city physician, and he remained in Zurich for the rest of his life.  It was during this settled period that he began his writings in earnest. 
     In addition to his other interests, he was also a linguist, and in 1555 published a book describing about 130 known languages.  He was always collecting samples of plants and having his farflung friends send him even more samples.  Although only two of his botanical books were published during his lifetime, his extensive notes and woodcuts of plants were circulated and used by other authors for hundreds of years.
     Gesner climbed mountains not only to collect botanical samples, but also for the sheer joy of it.  He wrote a letter to a friend in 1541 declaring his intention to climb at least one mountain every year for the rest of his life.  He authored what might well be the first written account of climbing.
     When he was only 49, Gesner contracted the plague.  Legend has it that when he knew he was about to die, he asked to be brought to his library where he could be surrounded by his beloved books.  At his death, he left behind 18 unpublished manuscripts in addition to the veritable mountain of his published works.
    

F IS FOR LAVINIA FONTANA

                                                                      Self-portrait

     Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) is widely considered the first female artist of the modern world to have worked as an equal alongside her male counterparts.  Born in Bologna, she was taught to paint in the then-popular Mannerist style by her father, a fairly minor artist.  Fortunately for Lavinia, Bologna was a relatively open-minded city; it had admitted women to its university since it opened in 1158.  Even for Bologna, though, Lavinia's marital arrangements must have stood out.  In 1577 she married another painter, Gian Paolo Zappi, who was a rather ordinary artist but must have been a very unusual man for his time.  He willingly subjugated his career to hers, becoming her assistant and agent as well as taking care of many household matters.  Meanwhile, Lavinia supported the family.  As far as I know, Gian Paolo was the first documented househusband in history, and I can only imagine how well that situation must have been received down at the bocce court.  It was because of his generosity that Lavinia, who gave birth to eleven children (although, sadly, only three of them survived her), managed to continue to devote herself to her career. 
     By the late 1570s Lavinia had achieved a local reputation for fine portraiture, depicting upper-class members of Bolognese society.

 

     Apparently female painters weren't unheard of at the time, but they were basically relegated to the "mommy track" of painting: portraiture.  Most of her portraits were of wealthy people who could afford to pay commissions, but here's one more intimate one that I particularly like:

 

                                (Could this have been one of her children?  I like to think so.) 

 

     What was different about Lavinia, though, was that she expanded her reach beyond portrait-painting into different genres.  She began with small devotional works painted on copper, which were popular as gifts, and moved on to large-scale works on religious and mythological subjects.

 

                                                              Minerva Dressing

 

                                                    Judith With the Head of Holofernes

 

     She was also commissioned to make many large altarpieces for the churches of Bologna.  In 1603, at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII, Lavinia and her family moved to Rome, where she continued to succeed at her work and the family of Pope Gregory XIII became her patrons.  Pope Paul V sat for a portrait by her.  She received many honors for her work, and was elected to the Accademia di San Luca, a Roman artists' guild.  All told, she painted 135 documented works, although only 32 signed and dated ones survive.  One of her paintings, "Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalen," now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery:

 

 

     Lavinia Fontana died in Rome in 1614.  Her prolific body of work outlives her.

 

     

E IS FOR DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

                                                              (1466 - 1536)

     Born in Rotterdam, Erasmus was raised, and was provided an excellent education which included  the study of Greek, by his parents (unmarried - his father was a Catholic priest), who both died of the plague in 1483.  His guardians then insisted on his entering a Dutch monastery, where he spent the next six years and was ordained a priest at about the age of 25.  Erasmus had already achieved a reputation as a brilliant scholar, and this was his ticket out of the canonical life: he was offered a post as secretary to the Bishop of Cambrai, France, whom he served for several years.  In 1495, with the Bishop's approval, he moved to Paris, where he studied at the University and became  acquainted with the scholarly new wave of Renaissance humanism, and supported himself by teaching until 1498.  He moved to England for a short time after that, but was back in France by 1500 and remained there for the next six years.  From 1506 to 1509 he was at Turin University in Italy.  Another stint at Queens College in Cambridge, England as a professor of Divinity followed, and then a residency at Leuven, the Netherlands.  After 1514 he lived alternately between England and Basel, Switzerland.  He didn't seem to ever be able to select any one place as a  home base.  Throughout his life, he was offered many permanent and prestigious academic posts, and he turned all of them down.  Rightly or wrongly, he believed that getting himself enmeshed with any one institution would hamper his intellectual freedom.  Instead, he chose to wander from place to place, chronically short of money and always asking his friends for loans.  Am I the only one reminded here of another great philosopher, Janis Joplin?  "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose..."  (Yes, I know Joplin didn't write "Me and Bobby McGee," but she embodied it.)
     In 1512 Erasmus embarked on a massive project, which he completed and published in 1516: a translation of the entire New Testament into both Latin and Greek (which also constituted the first published Greek translation).  He produced a second edition in 1519, a third in 1522, a fourth in 1527, and a fifth and final one in 1535, the year before his death.  While these were his most widely distributed works, Erasmus wrote numerous other books, many of them bitingly sarcastic criticisms of all classes of society, but in particular of abuses he perceived within the Church.
     Meanwhile, in 1517, Martin Luther had published his Ninety-FiveTheses, thus officially kicking off the Protestant Reformation.  Luther and his followers were delighted with Erasmus's harsh words about the Church and tried to persuade him to join their cause, but (no surprise, perhaps, knowing what we know about his stubborn independence) he refused to break with the Church and attempted to walk an impossible line by supporting both the Church and the Reformation; as he said, "I detest dissention because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature.  I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss."  Needless to say, this studied neutrality did not go over well with either party, both of which adopted the view that if Erasmus wasn't with them, he must be against them.  Finally, in 1524, Erasmus directly attacked Luther (or at least, Luther's views about the nonexistence of free will) in his writings, and Luther enthusiastically returned the favor.  The split between them was never healed.  Nonetheless, until the end of his life, Erasmus was deeply distrusted by the Church and suspected of being a heretic.
     Long before the phrase came into existence, Erasmus was the classic polarizing figure.  He had multitudes of intellectual friends from all over Europe, and corresponded with more than 500 of them.  But his public reputation was extremely mixed until the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century, when he rose again in the world's estimation.  Not everyone saw him in a positive light even then, however.  And the current Catholic Encyclopedia says both that Erasmus was "the most brilliant and most important leader of German humanism," and that "his vanity and egotism were boundless, and to gratify them he was ready to pursue former friends with defamation and invective.... His was an absolutely unspeculative brain, and he lacked entirely all power of acute philosophical definition."  They weren't holding back, were they?  The Church, at least, remains unwilling to forgive and forget; it still blames Erasmus for the Reformation.  On the other hand, can you guess after whom the modern-day European Union student exchange program is named?  A profoundly gifted writer, a fierce proponent of education, a theologian, a humanist philosopher...  Erasmus was all these things, and more.

 I'll end this post with a few quotes from this most quotable of Renaissance thinkers (he would have aced Twitter):

     -  It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

     -  In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

     -  When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.

    And, finally:

         

    

D IS FOR RANI DURGAVATI MARAVI

                                                                  (1524 - 1564)
     Durgavati Marati was born in what is now Utter Pradesh, India, into the Chandel dynasty of Emperor Keerat Rai.  At the age of 18 she was married to Dalpat Shah of the Gond dynasty, thus forming a strategic alliance between the two powerful families.
     When her husband Dalpat Shah died in about 1550, their only child, a son named Vir Narayan, was only seven years old.  Because he was too young to assume leadership, Durgavati took control of the Gond Kingdom, assuming the title Rani (Queen).  Her effectiveness in this role was tested in 1556 when her kingdom was attacked by Baz Bahadur from the neighboring Malwa region.  The Gond armies repelled the attack and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.  But in 1562, Bahadur was defeated by the very powerful Mughal sultanate, and as a result, Rani Durgavati's kingdom now shared a border with the famously fierce Mughals.  Asaf Khan, a Mughal general, wasted no time in invading Gond territory.
     Rani Durgavati engaged Asaf Khan's forces in battle and, although her soldiers were greatly outnumbered by the better-trained and better-armed Mughal forces, and her top general was killed, Durgavati herself took over the battle and was able to temporarily disperse the Mughal forces.
     Durgavati wanted to attack the Mughals again that night, but her lieutenants refused to carry out this plan.  As a result, the Mughals were able to receive reinforcements during the night.  The following morning, June 24, 1564, Durgavati, riding her war elephant Sarman, personally led her troops into battle.  Although her soldiers forced the Mughals to retreat three times, the tide turned when Durgavati's son was wounded and had to be removed from the battlefield.  Then Durgavati's neck was pierced by an arrow and she lost consciousness.  When she awoke and realized that defeat was imminent, she killed herself with her dagger rather than surrender to the enemy.
     Rani Durgavati Marati is still renowned in India for her great courage and leadership.  In 1983, Jabalpur University was renamed Rani Durgavati Vishwavidyalaya, and the present-day train between Jabalpur and Jammutawi is known as the Durgavati Express.  And Durgavati lives on, astride her elephant, as a noble statue in Jabalpur

and on a 1988 postage stamp, where she resembles an Amazon warrior.

p.s.  I hope you like this post, Archana!  It's for you!