Francesco Borromini

Italian architect

• Born: September 25, 1599
• Birthplace: Bissone, near Lake Lugano, Duchy of Lombardy (now in Italy)
• Died: August 2, 1667
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Borromini was one of the most innovative architects of the Baroque era, but his contemporaries were highly critical of what they believed to be his fantastical instead of logical work and believed that it violated the principles of sound architectural design. For this reason, his immediate influence was slight, but he is now considered one of the giants of Baroque architecture.

Early Life

Francesco Borromini’s father, Giovanni Domenico Castelli-Brumino, and his mother, Anastasia di Leone Garovo Allio, were members of two of the many families of masons and stonecutters who lived near one another on the Swiss border near Lake Lugano. Their son Francesco Castelli, who was later to change his name to Borromini, was born in Bissone, in what is the modern Swiss Canton of Ticino, in 1599. His early life remains a mystery. When he was fifteen, or perhaps even at the age of nine, he went to Milan, where he received a thorough grounding in the mason’s and stonecarver’s crafts. There was a considerable amount of building going on in Milan in the early seventeenth century, and the work on the great cathedral was in its final phases, but it is not known what, if any, work Borromini may have designed or executed.

Many of Borromini’s kinsmen had gone to Rome to work on papal building projects, and two of them had achieved considerable distinction. One was Domenico Fontana, the most important architect during the papacy of Pope Sixtus V, and the other was Borromini’s uncle, Carlo Maderno, who completed the construction of St. Peter’s during the reign of Paul V . Borromini idolized his uncle, and it was probably about 1619 that he was able to join him in Rome.

Maderno was then Rome’s leading architect, and Borromini began working for him at once, carving some of the architectural decoration for the portico of St. Peter’s Basilica. Within a few years, he had established himself as Maderno’s principal architectural draftsman and most trusted assistant, and he continued to work very closely with him until Maderno died in 1629. In 1621, Borromini was paid for carving some of the capitals for the drum of the dome of Sant’ Andrea della Valle in Rome, and two years later Maderno let him prepare the design for the lantern of the dome. The double capitals with heads of cherubs look forward to the bizarre decorations of his maturity. He was also responsible for the design of the decorative grille of the Cappella del Santissimo Sacramento in St. Peter’s.

By the mid-1620’s, Borromini had begun working for Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who was designing the crossing and the apse of St. Peter’s. Bernini was the great favorite of Pope Urban VIII , and during the late 1620’s, he began to take on more and more work in St. Peter’s. Whatever hopes Borromini may have had of ever replacing his uncle as architect in charge of the church faded during those years. Shortly after Maderno’s death, however, Bernini received the coveted appointment in February of 1629.

Life’s Work

Bernini was virtually an artistic dictator; in the early 1630’s, Borromini had no choice but to continue to work under him, at St. Peter’s and also at the Palazzo Barberini, the pope’s family palace, which Maderno had begun shortly before his death. It was not until the early 1630’s that Borromini was able to break with Bernini and pursue an independent architectural career.

His first commission came in 1634. The Spanish Order of the Discalced Trinitarians asked him to erect their church and monastery of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Borromini built the dormitory, the refectory, and the cloisters first and, in 1638, began working on the church, which was completed in 1641 and consecrated in 1646. The facade, however, was not completed until 1665-1667. The church therefore marks the beginning as well as the end of Borromini’s architectural career.

The plan of San Carlo is derived from a series of intricate geometric constructions in which two circles and an oval are inscribed within two equilateral triangles. The oval determines the shape of the dome, and the apexes of the triangles give the location of the half-oval side chapels. What is so unusual about Borromini’s plan is that it contradicts what had been one of the most important principles of architectural practice from the Renaissance onward: the concept of planning in terms of basic arithmetical units, such as the diameter of a column. By developing his plan as a series of geometric relationships, he was returning to the method of planning that had been common during the medieval period but had been largely abandoned during the Renaissance.

In 1637, the Oratorians of the Congregation of St. Philip Neri engaged Borromini to build an oratory for musical performances, a library, and living quarters for the fathers next to their church of San Maria in Vallicella. This was a major commission, and the building went up rapidly. The oratory was vaulted in 1638 and inaugurated in August, 1640. The facade is an architectural creation of great distinction. It curves slowly inward and is crowned by a pediment that for the first time combines the triangular pediment with the curved one, thus uniting in a single architectural form two motifs which had always been considered as contrasting alternatives.

No work by Borromini, though, approaches the complexity of San Ivo della Sapienza, the church of the Roman Archiginnasio, which was later the university. He had been appointed the architect of the Archiginnasio as early as 1632, but it was not until 1642 that he began work on the church. It was built at the end of a long, arcaded courtyard, and while the lower part of the facade echoes the arcaded motif, the upper part is a remarkable construction that would seem to be composed of a curved drum, a low, stepped dome, and an enormous lantern topped by a spiral ramp. The strangeness of the lantern appears to be at odds with what seems to be the rather logical division of the dome into its two parts, the drum and the dome itself. Inside the church, however, this apparent clarity is seen to be deceptive, for the dome actually extends well into the drum. Once again, Borromini insisted on creating architectural forms that his contemporaries considered to be at odds with accepted architectural practice.

Like San Carlo, the plan of San Ivo is based on a geometrical construction. This time two equilateral triangles have been joined so that, if lines are drawn to connect their points of intersection, a regular hexagon is formed, and this becomes the basis for the ground plan of the church. Hexagonal plans are virtually nonexistent in earlier Italian architecture, and Borromini’s use of the figure may have been intended to represent the six-pointed Star of David, a symbol of wisdom.

While Borromini did not lack commissions, he never achieved the stature of Bernini, who for more than fifty years basked in the sun of papal patronage. Only Pope Innocent X , who was elected in 1644, favored him. Indeed, it was for Innocent that Borromini began to rebuild the family church of San Agnese in 1653. After Innocent died in 1655, work ceased, and the church was later completed by others. In 1646, Innocent had set Borromini to work on the remodeling of one of the oldest churches in Rome, the venerable church of San Giovanni in Laterano, but the vault that he planned was never built.

During the last years of his life, Borromini was finally able to complete the facade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. There, where he began his career, he brought it to a climactic conclusion. The curved facade, one of the first fully curved Baroque facades on a church, is filled with contradictory elements that challenge traditional practices and concepts of design and that subsequent generations considered the antithesis of “proper” architecture. Today, however, its richness of decoration and mingling of architecture and sculpture have given it a secure place among the great monuments of Baroque architecture.

Borromini’s disappointments and jealousy over Bernini’s triumphs left him embittered and quarrelsome. He had few friends and lived as a recluse, devoting himself entirely to his work. As he grew older, his sense of persecution deepened, and eventually, in 1667, he tried to take his own life by falling on his sword. He lived for a few hours, taking the time to dictate to his confessor a strangely objective and dispassionate account of the reasons for his suicide.

Significance

Borromini, obsessed with the problems of his art, was a shy and misanthropic bachelor who lived in sparsely furnished rooms surrounded by his library of nearly one thousand books. In his will, he asked that he be buried in the tomb of his uncle, Carlo Maderno, one of the few people with whom he ever developed a warm relationship.

His rivalry with Bernini was fueled by his conviction that Bernini was deficient in the technical knowledge that was Borromini’s stock-in-trade. In the modern sense of the word, Borromini was a true professional, an expert within a limited range of concerns. Bernini, on the other hand, like his Renaissance predecessors, saw architecture as primarily a matter of design for which skill in drawing was sufficient training.

Borromini’s buildings were seen by his contemporaries as new and in many ways unsettling solutions to architectural problems. His fascination with complex geometric plans, his unorthodox use of architectural motifs, his refusal to accept the traditional separation of architecture and sculpture, and his interest in architectural symbolism led his contemporaries to consider his buildings as creations of fantasy rather than reason.

From the Renaissance onward, architecture had been seen as the process by which humans, guided by reason, could create structures that reflected the rational nature of the universe. With Borromini, this process comes to an end. His architecture is so complex, so full of contradictions, that it seems to defy human reason. In reality, though, behind its apparent irrationality there lies a degree of order of such subtlety that reason can no longer understand it. His work is intended to remind people that humankind must depend upon faith, not reason, to find answers about the nature of the universe. Borromini’s expression of this view makes him one of the most eloquent architectural spokespeople of the religious ideals of the Counter-Reformation.

Bibliography

Blunt, Anthony. Borromini. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. Still the best general book available in English on Borromini.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Baroque and Rococo: Architecture and Decoration. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. This work provides an excellent short chapter on Borromini’s architecture.

Connors, Joseph J. Borromini and the Roman Oratory: Style and Society. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980. A detailed discussion of the Congregation of St. Philip Neri, one of Borromini’s major architectural projects. Includes a catalog of drawings.

Hauptman, William. “Luceat Lux Vestra Coram Hominibus: A New Source for the Spire of Borromini’s San Ivo.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 33 (1974): 73-79. An investigation of the possible sources for the lantern of Borromini’s church of San Ivo della Sapienza and a detailed study of its iconographic meaning.

Hendrix, John. The Relation Between Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures in the Work of Francesco Borromini in Seventeenth Century Rome. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. Examines Borromini’s work within the context of architectural theories of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

Hopkins, Andrew. Italian Architecture from Michelangelo to Borromini. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002. Describes construction of a wide range of buildings to examine the changing functional demands, political forces, patronage systems, and local traditions in Italian architecture.

Morrissey, Jake. The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry That Transformed Rome. New York: Morrow, 2005. Outlines the relationship and conflict between Bernini and Borromini, the two most significant Italian Baroque architects.

Portoghesi, Paolo. The Rome of Borromini: Architecture as Language. Translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta. New York: George Braziller, 1968. The author’s detailed analyses of Borromini’s buildings are often difficult to follow, but there are many illustrations that provide full coverage of all phases of Borromini’s career.

Scott, John Beldon. “San Ivo Alla Sapienza and Borromini’s Symbolic Language.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 41 (1982): 294-317. A carefully documented study of the building history, ceremonial functions, and symbolic content of Borromini’s church.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750. 6th ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. The basic study of Italian Baroque art. The chapter on Borromini is an excellent introduction to his work and art theory.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Francesco Borromini, His Character and Life.” In Studies in the Italian Baroque. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1975. The English version of a lecture delivered in 1967 at an international congress honoring the tercentenary of Borromini’s death. Wittkower’s essay is an incisive study of Borromini’s psychological makeup.