Background
Nicholas Stone was born in 1586, the son of a quarryman of Woodbury, near Exeter.
Nicholas Stone was born in 1586, the son of a quarryman of Woodbury, near Exeter.
As a boy, Stone was first apprenticed to Isaac James, a Dutch-born London mason working in Southwark, London. When the sculptor Hendrik de Keyser (1567-1621), master mason to the City of Amsterdam, visited London in 1606, Stone was introduced to him and contracted to work for him in Holland.
Stone was the master mason under Inigo Jones in the construction of the Banqueting House at Whitehall (1619-1622). As a tomb sculptor, Stone was well established in London by 1622, and he became master mason to the crown in 1632.
His style evolved from a naturalistic approach to a more classical one, as in the Francis Holles Monument (1622) in Westminster Abbey, which also demonstrates the influence on Stone of Michelangelo’s tomb of Giuliano de Medici. Stone was an innovator, and his use of the circular base was unusual in the early 17th century. The North Gate of the Botanical Garden (1632) at Oxford reflects Renaissance ideas of garden architecture. He executed some of the sculptural decoration on the work, but additions were made at a later time. The Sir Charles Morison Monument (1619) at St. Mary’s Church in Watford, Hertfordshire, exemplifies his naturalistic style. Another classical work is the Lyttelton Monument (1634) at Magdalen College, Oxford. Stone’s more than 80 commissions were primarily executed in alabaster, marble, or stone. He produced some of the most significant monuments and sculptures of the entire 17th century in England.
Stone married Mayken de Keyser, the daughter of his former master, Hendrik de Keyser. The year after his marriage Stone returned to England with his wife, settling in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, where they remained throughout their lives. The marriage produced three sons: John (1620-1667), a sculptor; Henry Stone (1616-1653) an artist most notable for his copies of Van Dyck and Nicholas (1618-1647), a sculptor, who worked under Bernini in Rome.
