Guarino Guarini

Italian architect

• Born: January 17, 1624
• Birthplace: Modena (now in Italy)
• Died: March 6, 1683
• Place of death: Milan (now in Italy)

Guarini’s fusion of medieval and Moorish architectural vaulting systems, his theologically symbolic geometric floor plans, and his dramatic use of light allowed him to create structures that are perennially fascinating and influential.

Early Life

Guarino Guarini (gwah-REE-noh gwah-REE-nee) joined the Theatine priesthood in 1639, at the age of fifteen. His decision catapulted him from the small north Italian town of Modena to Rome, the dynamic cultural center of Baroque Italy. Guarini remained in Rome studying theology, philosophy, mathematics, and architecture in the monastery of Silvestro al Quirinale until 1647.

During Guarini’s Roman years, Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini created the buildings and sculpture that defined the Roman baroque style. The precise conditions of Guarini’s early training as an architect are unknown. Nevertheless, his biographers all agree that Borromini was Guarini’s primary architectural inspiration. Borromini’s Church of San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane is in the same district of Rome as the monastery where Guarini was a student. In addition to being in Rome at the same time, Borromini and Guarini have in common a youthful contact with medieval architecture. Borromini worked on the fabric of the Gothic cathedral at Milan before he came to Rome, and Guarini was reared in a town dominated by the splendid Romanesque cathedral of St. Germinian.

Guarini’s membership in the Theatine order and his training in mathematics as well as philosophy and theology set him on a path toward a theologically complex and expressive multinational style of architecture. The Theatines were one of the new orders created in the sixteenth century known as the Clerks Regular. These orders devolved out of the Roman Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation, advocated in the sixteenth century by Gian Pietro Carafa, one of the founders of the Theatines. Carafa became Pope Paul IV in 1555.

The Theatines, recognized by Pope Leo X in 1524, were the first of the Clerks Regular, setting the model for other sixteenth and seventeenth century Counter-Reformation orders, including the Barnabites, Somaschi, Caracciolini, and the well-known Jesuits. All these groups needed new churches, and all moved freely throughout Europe since Clerks Regular were not bound to a single parish.

Cajetan, one of the founders of the Theatines, sought to reform both clergy and laity with ideals much like those of the thirteenth century reformers Saint Dominic and Saint Francis. Therefore it is not surprising that Guarini would feel a kinship with the architecture of the thirteenth century as well as the theology of that age. As the Gothic church functioned as a bible of the poor in the Middle Ages, so Baroque Counter-Reformation architects such as Borromini, Bernini, and Guarini created an architecture to inspire and amaze the worshiper through the use of startling visual effects designed to make the intervention of the divine in the natural world a concrete event.

The illusionistic use of light is paramount in Italian Baroque architecture, and Guarini probably learned this lesson from Bernini. He was in Rome when Bernini began his sculpture Saint Theresa in Ecstasy (1645-1652). For this work, Bernini designed the space of the Coronaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria so that it seems as if the worshiper has suddenly come face to face with the living saint in an intimate spiritual moment. Above and behind the figures, Bernini concealed a window so that the impression of a sudden, light-filled visionary moment is made all the more believable. Guarini would use just such dramatic illusionistic lighting in his domes in Lisbon, Sicily, Paris, and Turin, making them appear to float on slender, interlaced ribs.

From Borromini, Guarini learned the use of complex geometry as a basis for floor plans. Borromini’s Church of San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane is an oval inscribed in a rectangle, an elongated version of the circle inscribed in a square that was the geometric basis for much Gothic decoration. Borromini’s second Roman church, Saint Ivo della Sapienza, was a star hexagon plan created by superimposing two equilateral triangles. Guarini used such a format in the presbytery dome of San Lorenzo in Turin.

Life’s Work

After completing his studies in Rome, Guarini returned to Modena in 1647, where he worked with Giovanni Castiglione on the Church of San Vincenzo and the Theatine monastery. For some reason he left Modena in 1657 and his activities are not documented again until 1660, when he appears as a teacher of mathematics and philosophy at Messina, in Sicily. It seems quite likely that during the years 1657-1660, Guarini went to Spain. Juan Antonio Ramirez’s well-argued conclusion that Guarini traveled on the Iberian Peninsula is based on Guarini’s use of the twisted or salomóniac column in his published designs for Santa Maria della Divina Providenza in Lisbon. Unfortunately this church was lost in an earthquake in 1755.

Another frequently suggested proof that Guarini was in Spain is the similarity between the vaulting system he developed in his mature work and the Moorish design of the vaults of the mosque at Cordova. In any case, Guarini knew the Talvera Chapel in the old Cathedral of Salamanca, for he cited it in his treatise on architecture.

Although few of his buildings remain standing, Guarini did leave major monuments in the north Italian city of Turin and records of his intellect and designs in his books. His interest in philosophy resulted in Placita philosophica of 1665. He wrote a mathematical treatise, Euclides adauctus et methodicus , in 1671; his architectural drawings were published three years after his death as Desegni d’architettura civile e ecclesiastica in 1686; and his best-known and most influential book, Architettura civile , was published posthumously by Bernardo Vittone in 1737 (“Civil Architecture,” 2004). The architectural books document Guarini’s international reputation, because they contain plans for churches in Prague as well as Lisbon, Nice, and Paris. No other books by him have been translated into English, but they found a wide readership in eighteenth century Western Europe, and twentieth century editions of the architectural works were published in London and Milan in 1964 and 1968.

By 1662, Guarini was in Paris, a fully mature, well-traveled architect, uniquely suited to design the Theatine Church of St. Anne-la-Royale. He had assimilated the influences of Borromini, Bernini, and the lessons of medieval and Moorish vault construction. The Theatines, invited to Paris by Cardinal Jules Mazarin , had royal protection, but David R. Coffin attributes their popularity in seventeenth century Paris to their dramatic liturgies. Guarini set the stage for those practices with a floor plan for St. Anne-la-Royale consisting of four diamond shapes that overlapped the corners of a fifth central diamond. Above the central space rose a dome laced with eight overlapping semicircular ribs pierced with kidney-shaped windows. On the exterior, this startling shape was expressed as an octagon with concave faces. While the exterior reveals the influence of Borromini, the interior was Guarini’s invention. He experimented with this kind of vault in the hexagonal Church of the Somaschi in Messina before he came to Paris and presumably just after he returned to Italy from Spain. Unfortunately, all of his works in Messina were destroyed by an earthquake in 1908, and St. Anne-la-Royale was demolished by 1823.

The final phase of Guarini’s development took place in northern Italy. In 1666, Guarini became the chief architect of the House of Savoy, making their capital city, Turin, the most progressive architectural center in Italy at the close of the seventeenth century. His secular commissions there consisted of additions to the Palace of Racconigi, the unfinished Collegio dei Nobili, and the main wing of the Palazzo Carignano. Guarini’s contribution at Carignano was a sophisticated rippling facade of concave and convex pattern that Rudolf Wittkower notes is suggestive of Bernini’s rejected plans for the Louvre. The facades of Borromini’s San Carlo and St. Ivo are also recalled at Carignano. A most unique feature of this palace is Guarini’s use of cast brick ornament around the windows and in dense vertical bands of eight-pointed stars on the courtyard facade. Carignano was completed in the nineteenth century and so does not as fully represent Guarini’s mature style as do his ecclesiastical commissions in Turin.

San Lorenzo was the Theatine church in Turin and received the full measure of Guarini’s intellectual and visual complexity. It is an octagon that at the second floor area becomes a four-sided Greek cross and then metamorphoses into an eight-pointed star floating between the floor and a secondary dome. Guarini intensified his illusory space by piercing the wall between the first and second domes with windows. A six-pointed star formed by two overlapping equilateral triangles crowns the adjoining dome of the presbytery, giving visual form to the theological concept of the Trinity. Guarini’s floating domes at San Lorenzo are matched only by his Chapel of the Holy Shroud, also built at Turin.

With this dome/tower, Guarini captured the illusion of a telescope focused on infinity, which brings a vision of the Holy Spirit to the congregation. Using spaces and structures based on multiples of three, he raised six hexagons of increasingly smaller dimensions toward an apparently free-floating, twelve-edged golden star upon which he depicted a white dove in flight. The hexagons are set at angles to one another, adding to the mystery of the space, while the walls between the hexagons are pierced by windows framed with segmental arches. Christian Norberg-Schulz termed the Chapel of the Holy Shroud “one of the most mysterious and deeply stirring spaces ever created.”

Significance

Guarini’s arguments that one could create a miraculous architecture with Gothic vaulting were persuasively presented in his commentary on Gothic building in his Architettura civile and in his buildings. His book was widely circulated in eighteenth century Austria and Germany, contributing to the development of such architects as Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, and Johann Balthasar Neumann. In the twentieth century, his understanding of skeletal construction and window-pierced walls has appealed to architects who use steel and reinforced concrete to support their curtain-walled constructions. Guarini’s ability to activate a spiritual space remains a model for all designers.

Bibliography

Blunt, Anthony, ed. Baroque and Rococo: Architecture and Decoration. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. A general introduction to seventeenth and eighteenth century architecture in Europe and the Americas. Excellent for setting Guarini’s work in historical context.

Cannon-Brookes, P., and C. Cannon-Brookes. Baroque Churches. Feltham, N.Y.: Hamlyn, 1969. Contains a chapter on Guarini in Turin and specific information on Guarini’s early training.

Coffin, David R. “Padre Guarino Guarini in Paris.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 15, no. 2 (1956): 3-11. Focused on the Parisian church of St. Anne-la-Royale. Excellent coverage of contemporary judgments of the church with extensive footnotes.

Guarini, Guarino. “Civil Architecture.” In The Emergence of Modern Architecture: A Documentary History from 1000 to 1810, edited by Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis. New York: Routledge, 2004. Part of a collection of primary source documents by architects and others writing between 1000 and 1810.

Meek, H. A. Guarino Guarini and His Architecture. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988. The first book-length English-language biography, providing a comprehensive survey of Guarini’s life and architectural achievements. Includes illustrations of Guarini’s work, many of them in color.

Müller, Werner. “The Authenticity of Guarini’s Stereotomy in His Architettura civile.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 27, no. 3 (1968): 202-208. Analysis of the mathematical content of Guarini’s treatise on architecture. Müller notes the errors Guarini’s publisher or editor made in transcribing parts of his text on Euclidian geometry into the architectural treatise. Excellent discussion of sixteenth and seventeenth century mathematical theory and the science of stone cutting.

Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Baroque Architecture. Reprint. New York: Rizzoli, 1986. Many very clear photographs of pages from Guarini’s architectural writings as well as good photographs of most extant buildings. Interesting discussion of Guarini’s concept of architecture as a union of spatial units.

Ramirez, Juan Antonio. “Guarino Guarini, Fray Juan Ricci, and the ’Complete Salomonic Order.’” Art History 4 (1981): 175-185. A well-argued case for Guarini’s visit to Spain in the late 1650’s. Useful information about seventeenth century Spanish architectural theory.

Scott, John Beldon. Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. An architectural history of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, including information on Guarini’s design and construction of the church.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750. Revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu. 3 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. Frequently revised, this is the most readily available general text on Italian Baroque architecture in English. Analysis of Guarini is superb for its balanced insights on his engineering innovations and sensitivity to his theological symbolism.