Francesco Borromini

Borromini (anonymous youth portrait).

Francesco Borromini, byname of Francesco Castelli (September 25 1599 – August 3 1667) was a prominent and influential Baroque architect in Rome.

Early life and first works

Son of the stone mason Giovanni Domenico Castelli and Anastasia Garovo, Borromini began his career as a stone mason himself, and soon moved to Milan to study and practice this activity. He was also called "Bissone," by the place in which he was born (near Lugano, in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland). When in Rome (1619) he changed his name (from Castelli to Borromini) and started working for Carlo Maderno, his distant relative, at St. Peter's. When Maderno died in 1629, he joined the group under Gian Lorenzo Bernini, completing the facade and expansions of Maderno's Palazzo Barberini.

San Carlino (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane)

Façade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane.

Borromini's first major independent commission was the reconstruction in 1634-37 of the interior spaces of the church and adjacent buildings of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (also called San Carlino); the façade of the small church would be completed by Borromini much later, at the end of his career, which San Carlo neatly brackets. The church is dedicated to San Carlo Borromeo, and may have prompted his name change. The small church is considered by many an iconic masterpiece of Roman Baroque. Borromini avoided linear classicism and eschewed a simple circular shape in favor of a corrugated oval, beneath an oval dome that is coffered in a system of crosses and octagons that diminishes towards the lantern, source of all the light in this dark interior The church is small; its complex convex-concave rhythms disrupt the oval of the nave; he "designed the walls to weave in and out as if they were formed not of stone but of pliant substance set in motion by an energetic space, carrying with them the deep entablatures, the cornices, moldings and pediments" (Trachtenberg & Hyman). It is far bolder in geometric intricacy and less encrusted with figurative decorations than Bernini's Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, which lies just down the street. That latter church has a sculptural drama embedded into the architecture, as a form of bel composto. In San Carlino, the drama is rational and geometric. The undulating elements in the façade (1662-67; illustration, right), united by a serpentining cornice, and sculpted with niches, are also masterful; such flexing boldness bore fruit especially in the distinctive Neapolitan and Sicilian Baroque.

Sant'Agnese in Agone

For Sant'Agnese in Agone, he reverted the original plan of Girolamo Rainaldi (and his son Carlo Rainaldi), which previously had its main entrance on Via di Santa Maria dell'Anima. The façade was expanded to include parts of the bordering Palazzo Pamphilj, gaining space for the two bell towers (each of which has a clock, as in St. Peter's, one for Roman time, the other for tempo ultramontano, European time).

Borromini lost this commission before completion due to the death of the Pope Innocent X in 1655. The new Pope, Alexander VII, and Prince Camillo Pamphilj recalled Rainaldi, but this one didn't change very much and the church is mainly considered a notable expression of Borromini's concepts.

Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, courtyard and façade.

Sant' Ivo alla Sapienza

From 1640-1650, he worked on the design of the church of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza and its courtyard, near University of Rome La Sapienza palace. It was initially the church of the Roman Archiginnasio. He had been initially recommended for the commission in 1632, by his then supervisor for the work at the Palazzo Barberini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The site, like many in cramped Rome, is challenged for external perspectives. It was built at the end of Giacomo della Porta's long courtyard. The dome and cochlear steeple are peculiar, and reflect the idiosyncratic architectural motifs that distinguish Borromini from contemporaries. Inside, the nave has an unusual centralized plan circled by alternating concave and convex-ending cornices, leading to a dome decorated with linear arrays of stars and putti. The structure of the geometry of the structure is a symmetric six-pointed star; from the center of the floor, the cornice looks like a two equilateral triangles forming a hexagon, but three of the points are clover-like, while the other three are concavely clipped. The innermost columns are points on a circle. The fusion of feverish and dynamic baroque excesses with a rationalistic geometry is an excellent match for a church in a papal institution of higher learning.

Oratory of Saint Phillip Neri (Oratorio dei Fillipini)

The congregation of the Filippini already had one of the most well-decorated Baroque churches in Rome, and the order, so enthralled by the piousness encouraged by music, had planned to build an oratory, as well as a residential quarters, adjacent to the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova) located in crowded central Rome. Borromini won a competition for designing the structure against many including Paolo Maruscelli. He was employed in the task for 13 years, often a testy process. By 1640, the oratory was in use, by 1643, the library was complete. The striking facade adjacent to the church entrance has little regard for the structures behind. Inside the oratory is articulated by half columbs and a complex rhythm of pilasters.

Borromini was a contemporary with the prolific papal architect, and specially late in life, a rival of the eminently successful Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Borromini is purported to be a strong influence on the Piedmontese architect, Camillo-Guarino Guarini and his successors.

Other works

Borromini's works include:

• Interior of Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano
• Cappella Spada, San Girolamo della Carità (uncertain attribution)
• Palazzo Spada (trick perspective)
• Palazzo Barberini (upper-level windows and oval staircase)
• Santi Apostoli in Naples - Filamarino Altar
• Sant'Andrea delle Fratte
• Oratorio dei Filippini
• Collegio de Propaganda Fide [5]
• Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori
• San Giovanni in Oleo (restoration)
• Palazzo Giustiniani (with Carlo Fontana)
• Facade of Palazzo Falconieri
• Santa Lucia in Selci (restoration)
• Saint Peter's Basilica (gates to Blessed Sacrament Chapel and possibly parts of baldacchino)

Death and epitaph

In the summer of 1667, Borromini, suffering from nervous disorders and depression, committed suicide in Rome, after the completion of the Falconieri chapel (the main chapel) in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where he was buried (account).

The primary inscription on Borromini's tomb, in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, reads:

FRANCISCVS BORROMINI TICINENSIS
EQVES CHRISTI
QVI
IMPERITVRAE MEMORIAE ARCHITECTVS
DIVINAM ARTIS SVAE VIM
AD ROMAM MAGNIFICIS AEDIFICIIS EXORNANDAM VERTIT
IN QVIBUS
ORATORIVM PHILLIPINVM S. IVO S. AGNES IN AGONE
INSTAVRATA LATERANENSIS ARCHIBASILICA
S. ANDREAS DELLE FRATTE NVNCVPATUM
S. CAROLVS IN QVIRINALI
AEDES DE PROPADANDA FIDE
HOC AVTEM IPSVM TEMPLVM
ARA MAXIMA DECORAVIT
NON LONGE AB HOC LAPIDE
PROPE MORTALES CAROLI MADERNI EXUVVIAS
PROPINQVI MVNICIPIS ET AEMVLI SVI
IN PACE DOMINI QVIESCIT

Francesco Borromini was featured on the 100 Swiss Franc banknote current in the 1980s .

Notes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Francesco Borromini

External links

• Columbia University: Joseph Connors, Francesco Borromini: Opus Architectonicum, Milan, 1998: Introduction to Borromini's own description of the Casa dei Filippini
• Borromini's own account of his eventually successful suicideattempt
• (3)Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism, p346-7. 

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