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Giacomo Leoni (; 1686 – 8 June 1746), also known as James Leoni, was an Italian architect, born in Venice. He was a devotee of the work of Florence Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, who had also been an inspiration for Andrea Palladio. Leoni thus served as a prominent exponent of Palladianism in English architecture, beginning in earnest around 1720. Also loosely referred to as Georgian, this style is rooted in Italian Renaissance architecture.
Having previously worked in Düsseldorf, Leoni arrived in England, where he was to make his name, in 1714, aged 28. His fresh, uncluttered designs, with just a hint of Baroque flamboyance, brought him to the attention of prominent patrons of the arts.
On the frontispiece of his edition of Palladio, Leoni titled himself "Architect to his most serene Highness the Elector Palatine." This claim, however, remains unsubstantiated.Connor.
Leoni followed his Palladian volume with an English translation of Alberti's De Re Aedificatoria ("On Architecture"), the first modern book on the theories and practice of architecture.
Leoni's first commissions in England, though for high-profile clients Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent and James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope, First Lord of the Treasury, remained unexecuted. His first built design in England was Queensberry House, 7 Burlington Gardens, for John Bligh, Lord Clifton, in 1721. This was to be an important architectural landmark, as the first London mansion to be built on a terrace with an "antique temple front."
Throughout this career in England, Leoni was to be responsible for the design of at least twelve large country houses and at least six London mansions. He is also known to have designed church monuments and memorials.
The transformation at Lyme was a success. However, it has been claimed that the central Ionic portico, the focal point of the south front, was a little spoiled later by English architect Lewis Wyatt's 19th-century addition of a box-like structure above its pediment.Opinion of Joekes, p32. This squat tower, known as a "hamper," is on the site of Leoni's intended cupola, which was rejected by the owner.
Leoni reconstructed Lyme in an early form of what was to become known as the Palladian style, with the secondary, domestic and staff rooms on a rusticated ground floor, above which was a piano nobile, formally accessed by an exterior double staircase from the courtyard. Above the piano nobile were the more private room and less formal rooms for the family.
In a true Palladian house (one villa designed by Palladio himself), the central portion behind the portico would contain the principal rooms, while the lower flanking wings were domestic offices usually leading to terminating pavilions which would often be agricultural in use. It was this adaption of the wings and pavilions into the body of the house that was to be a hallmark of the 18th-century Palladianism that spread across Europe, and of which Leoni was an early exponent. At Lyme, while the central portico, resting upon a base reminiscent of Palladio's Villa Pisani, dominates the façade, the flanking wings are short, and of the same height as the central block, and the terminating pavilions are merely suggested by a slight projection in the facade. Thus in no way could the portico be seen as a corps de logis. This has led some architectural commentators to describe the south front as more Baroque than Palladian in style.The house is frequently described as being Palladian in style, but not all experts agree that it is truly Palladian. Referring to the south front, English Heritage says "For a garden front it is magnificent but more Baroque than Palladian" and makes no other reference to the Palladian style. Pevsner, p260 says: "But his Leoni's great south front is not a Palladian front." However, at this early stage of his career Leoni appears to have been still following the earlier and more renaissance-inspired Palladianism which had been imported to England in the 17th century by Inigo Jones. This is evident by his use of classical pilasters throughout the south façade, in the same way that Jones had used them, a century earlier, at the Banqueting House, Whitehall and Leoni's mentor, Alberti, had employed them at the Palazzo Rucellai in the 1440s. These features, coupled with the heavy mannerist use of rustication on the ground floor with segmented arches and windows, is the reason that Lyme appears more "Italian" than many other English houses in the Palladian style and has led to it being described as "the boldest Palladian building in England."Joekes, p156.
The house was to have similarities with one of Leoni's more ambitious projects, Lathom House. Both were similar in concept to Andrea Palladio's never-built Villa Mocenigo, with great spreading and segmented wings embracing a cour d'honneur. Today, the wings have been demolished but the square corps de logis remains.
Lathom House (demolished in 1929) was a truly Palladian house with a large corps de logis, from which spread twin segmented linking it to two monumental secondary wings of stables and domestic offices. The secondary wings or blocks, each crowned with a cupola, were similar in style to those built by Henry Flitcroft for the Duke of Bedford twenty years later at the far larger Woburn Abbey.Bedford, p22.
For all his work and fame, Leoni did not achieve great financial benefit. It is recorded that in 1734, Lord Fitzwalter of Moulsham gave him £25 to ease his "being in distress.".Edwards, p53. Later, as Leoni lay dying in 1746, Lord Fitzwalter sent him a further £8 "par charité"Edwards, p64. He is known to have had a wife, Mary, and two sons, one of whom is "thought" to have been a clerk to the great exponent of Palladianism Matthew Brettingham.
Leoni did not only design grand mansions. His lesser designs included an octagonal garden temple at Cliveden for George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, in 1735;Ryan p12. an elegant arch in purest Palladian tradition, at Stowe, for Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham; and a Portland stone bridge at Stone Court, Carshalton. Leoni is thought to have designed a new church when working for Robert Petre, 8th Baron Petre at Thorndon Hall, Essex. The original church had been swept away to make room for the new mansion he was designing there.
Today, it is difficult to assess Leoni's works as much has been destroyed. Amongst his country houses, Moulsham, built in 1728, was pulled down in 1816; Bodecton Park, completed in 1738 was razed in 1826 and Lathom, completed circa 1740, was lost like so many other English country houses in the 20th century. By the early 20th century, the style of Palladianism which Leoni's books and works did so much to promote,Curl, p27 was so quintessentially English that the fact that it was regarded as purely Italian at the time of its inception was largely forgotten. So indigenous to England does it seem, that in 1913 – a time of huge pride in all things British – Sir Aston Webb's new principal façade at Buckingham Palace strongly resembled Leoni's 'Italian palazzo.'
By the time of his death, Palladianism had been taken up by a whole new generation of British architects working in the classical forms, and was to remain in fashion until it was replaced by the Neoclassical interpretations of such architects as Robert Adam.
His final intended publication, which would have added to an evaluation of his work " Treatise of Architecture and ye Art of Building Publick and Private Edifices—Containing Several Noblemen's Houses & Country Seats’ was to have been a book of his own designs and interpretations. It remained uncompleted at the time of his death.
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