BORROMINI, FRANCESCO detto il CASTELLO. - Born at Bissone on 27 Sept. 1599 and died at Rome in Aug. 1667. After a stay in Milan, which could have had no formative importance, B. came to Rome around 1615 and worked as a stonecutter on some cherub heads on the doors of St. Peter's in the Vatican. Later four capitals in the small dome of S. Andrea della Valle show him humbly engaged in work directed by Maderno, who was thus able to appreciate the abilities of the young man, who was also his distant relative. For St. Peter's he made in those years many works in marble, the base for Michelangelo's Pietà, many coats of arms, part of the facing for the large niches of the apse; he also drew with decorative liveliness the iron grilles that give light to the chapels of the underground areas of the piers and executed the elegant doors of the chapel of the Sacrament. Bernini made use of him to translate into full scale the designs for the baldachin of St. Peter's and left him a certain freedom of action in the Palazzo Barberini, where he had succeeded Maderno after his death; there the windows with inflected cornice that flank the loggia show a plasticity of carving and an ornamental liveliness that clearly differentiate them.
After this humble activity of his, B. began his career as an architect with the convent and church of S. Carlino alle Quattro Fontane (1634-41), whose facade was executed later. In this building, which has a lozenge-shaped plan with the corners replaced by broad parabolic and elliptical curves, the rectilinear sections are reduced to a minimum so that the rhythm of the different curves unwinds and merges in the short flat walls pierced by doors and niches; the arrangement of the coffers in the flattened vaults illusorily increases its depth; the light pours down, softened by the elliptical dome that sums up and fuses the articulations of the space. With admirable subtlety, through the meticulous study of every detail, B. achieves the illusory dilation of the interior, regulated by rhythms that generate in the observer a state of emotional tension. The hall of the refectory (now the sacristy) is founded on the same principles, where the corners of the walls are replaced by concave curves; in the cloister, moreover, every traditional element loses its meaning, the pauses of the trabeated segments take on new vitality through their oblique position, and the ascending and descending rhythm of the balustrade animates the voids that predominate in the upper order.
Designed with skilful perspectival devices, the gallery of Palazzo Spada (1635-38), an example to Bernini for the Scala Regia in the Vatican, B. was given the task of building the convent of the Filippini at the Chiesa Nuova (1638). Having resolved with admirable flexibility the planimetric arrangement of the whole in relation to the demands of the setting, he inserts into the simple lines of a civil building the two-storey facade, slightly concave, in which the convexity of the lower section corresponding to the door finds its place. The example of Michelangelo, whom B. proclaims his master, is truly present here not through a generic formal derivation - note in any case the use of the single order - but in the lofty lyricism that shapes his expressive means, modifies the windows, multiplies the recesses, transforms the capitals, moves the masses in an aspiration, forever unsatisfied, toward a formal freedom that might translate the fervour of the inner vision. The oratory, set crosswise and rhythmically articulated by pilasters, expands through the admirable curve of the vault that rises airily above the attic.
Appointed architect of the Sapienza in 1632, B. worked actively there on the southern side and from 1642 to 1656 erected at the end of the courtyard the small church of S. Ivo. The plan results from the combination of two triangles, one with convex sides, the other with concave ones. On entering the church, however, one does not perceive this geometric decomposition of the plan, but only an alternation of convex and concave sections, a tight rhythm of masses advancing and receding, surfaces articulated by a very tall order of pilasters which, enclosing the interior space, accentuate the sense of centrality, dominated by the tall dome. The principles of illusory spatial dilation that appeared in S. Carlino are given concrete form in a definitive vision; the strong verticalism, linked by some critics to the Gothic tradition, departs from it through the centrifugal force that bursts forth from the central axis and justifies the course of the walls, as well as through the precise rationality of every spatial limit. The spiral motion of the lantern attests with how much vivacity of imagination and how much dynamism B. conceived every detail of his building.
On the death of Urban VIII, B. took part in the complex disputes over the bell towers of St. Peter's in the Vatican designed by Bernini, showing great technical expertise. He was then given the task of renovating the naves of St. John Lateran on the occasion of the jubilee of 1650. In the central nave he framed aedicules, reliefs and oval niches between very tall pilasters; in this work he gave proof of an exquisite capacity as a decorator by having flowering ornamental motifs modelled in stucco; he also gathered into aedicules as much as could be recovered of the monuments that had previously adorned the ancient basilica.
In other buildings B.'s work is diminished by the intervention of various architects. Thus at S. Agnese in Agone, begun by the Rainaldi, B. between 1652 and 1657 closely linked the dome and the bell towers, giving the facade a concave course in the extreme sections. He succeeded in giving an equally vigorous unity to the interior which, in its static solemnity, is foreign to B.'s intimate convictions. At S. Andrea delle Fratte the tribune and the most agile bell tower, adorned with winged caryatids, rises like a miracle of statics animated by intense chiaroscuro effects. At Propaganda Fide, besides completing the palace, he designed the chapel dedicated to the Magi, which reveals itself on the exterior with the gigantic order, while the columns of the windows accentuate its chiaroscuro effect; inside, the measured equilibrium of the oratory of the Filippini gives way in the central space to a more compact vision, but the chapels already tend to detach themselves as spatial entities in their own right. The phenomenon can be followed even better in the interior of the church of the Sette Dolori, admirable in its chiaroscuro effects and a prelude to that way of experiencing space that would become common in the following century.
In the meantime B. worked on Palazzo Falconieri (1645), adding the loggia toward the Tiber and adorning the rooms with stuccoes of admirable lightness; he took part in the construction of Palazzo Pamphilj with various designs and added the main portal to Palazzo Giustiniani; he arranged the Spada chapel in S. Girolamo della Carità, which has as its balustrade a marble drape supported by angels; finally he took part in the works of the Lateran baptistery and in those of the small temple of S. Giovanni in Oleo. His activity closes with the facade of the church of S. Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, where the convex-concave course is accentuated in the brevity of the space, the chiaroscuro becomes tight and insistent through the use of free-standing columns, and the surfaces are reduced to a minimum by the rich decorations. Having surpassed the dynamic concentration of mature Baroque, B. glimpses the future directions of architecture and, with the modulated pictorial vibrations of the facade of S. Carlino, creates a model from which the architects of the eighteenth century in Rome and beyond the Alps would draw inspiration.
His enmity with Bernini, the subject of so many anecdotes, is resolved critically in a real opposition, or rather in a different orientation within the single sphere of the Baroque. Bernini starts from the overall vision and arrives at the particular if and when he wishes, strikes the observer's imagination with colour and the preciousness of the material, abandons himself to creative impetus but, by an inner law, checks his momentum and recomposes himself into a serene classical ideality, which draws its foundation from a lively taste for plasticity. B., on the other hand, attentive, measured and precise, torments a plan or a profile with the same insistence, arrives at the overall effect through infinite devices; he often uses the humblest materials, disdains polychromy or confines it within very narrow limits; he sets no limits to his lyrical vision, does not submit to pre-established formulas, but like Michelangelo creates his own language and communicates to his work that inner tension which is translated into a particular mode of spatial dynamics. B., through the imprint so distinct markedly original stamp of his personality, he could not have a true school of his own, but in Rome no one escaped his influence, at least as regards ornamental details. An entire strand of eighteenth-century architecture, from Raguzzini to Posi, depends on him. His true continuator was Guarini, who with Andrea Pozzo spread his forms and taste first in Italy and then beyond the Alps. - See Pl. CXIV.
Bibliography10 works
Guglielmo Matthiae