ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE
Carlo Maderno and
Gianlorenzo Bernini
In architecture, the beginnings of the Baroque style cannot be defined
as precisely as in painting. In the vast ecclesiastical building program
that got under way in Rome toward the end of the sixteenth century, the
most talented young architect to emerge was Carlo Maderno
(1556-1629). In
1603
he was given the task of completing, at long last, the
church of St. Peter's. The pope had decided to add a nave to
Michelangelo's building (fig. 661),
converting it into a basilica. The change of
plan, which may have been prompted by the example of Il
Gesu (see figs.
706 and 708),
made it possible to link St. Peter's with the
Vatican Palace to the right of the church (fig.
754). Maderno's design for
the facade follows the pattern established by Michelangelo for the
exterior of the church. It consists of a colossal order supporting an
attic, but with a dramatic emphasis on the portals. The effect can only
be described as a crescendo that builds from the corners toward the
center. The spacing of the supports becomes closer, pilasters turn into
columns, and the facade wall projects step by step.
This quickened rhythm had been hinted at a generation earlier in
Giacomo della Porta's facade of Il Gesu (see fig.
708). Maderno made it the
dominant principle of his facade designs, not only for St. Peter's but
for smaller churches as well. In the process, he replaced the
traditional concept of the church facade as one continuous wall surface,
which was not yet challenged by the facade of Il Gesu. with the
"facade-in-depth," dynamically related to the open space before it. The
possibilities implicit in this new concept were not to be exhausted
until 150 years later.
Maderno's work at St. Peter's was completed by
Gianlorenzo Bernini
(1598-1680), the greatest
sculptor-architect of the century. He molded the open space in front of
the facade into a magnificent oval piazza. This "forecourt'
acts as an immense atrium framed by colonnades
which Bernini himself likened to the motherly, all-embracing arms of the
Church. For sheer impressiveness, this integration of the building with
such a grandiose setting of molded open space can be compared only with
the ancient Roman sanctuary at Palestrina (see fig.
244).
The piazza can be thought of as a continuation on the exterior of the
decoration program at St. Peter's that occupied Bernini at intervals
during most of his long and prolific career. The enormous size of St.
Peter's made the decoration of its interior a uniquely difficult task:
how to relate its chill vastness to the human scale and imbue it with a
measure of emotional warmth, lie began by designing the huge bronze
canopy for the main altar under the dome (see fig.
755). The tabernacle is a
splendid fusion of architecture and sculpture. Four ornate,
spiral-shaped columns support an upper platform. At its corners are
statues of angels and vigorously curved scrolls which raise high the
symbol of the victory of Christianity over the pagan world, a cross
above a golden orb. The entire structure is so alive with expressive
energy that it strikes us as the very epitome of Baroque style. Yet its
most striking feature, the corkscrew columns, had been invented in late
antiquity, and even employed, on a much smaller scale, in the old
basilica of St. Peter's. Thus Bernini could claim the best possible
precedent for his own use of the motif. This is not the only instance of
an affinity between Baroque and ancient art. Several monuments of Roman
architecture of the second and third centuries A.D. seem to anticipate
the style of the seventeenth (see figs. 261-64).
754.
Aerial view of St. Peter's. Rome. Nave and facade by
Carlo Maderno,
1607-15;
colonnade by
Gianlorenzo Bernini,
designed 1657
755.
Carlo Maderno. Nave,
with
Gianlorenzo Bernini's
Tabernacle (1624-33)
at crossing, St. Peter's, Rome
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Carlo Maderno
Carlo Maderno, (born 1556, Bissone, Milan—died Jan. 30,
1629, Rome), leading Roman architect of the early 17th
century, who determined the style of early Baroque
architecture.
Maderno began his architectural career in
Rome assisting his uncle Domenico Fontana. His first major
Roman commission, the facade of Santa Susanna (1597–1603),
led to his appointment in 1603 as the chief architect for
Saint Peter’s. In 1607 he designed the nave and a new facade
for Saint Peter’s and was made architect to Pope Paul V.
Maderno’s additions to Saint Peter’s were consonant with the
spirit of the Counter-Reformation; by adding the nave he
transformed Michelangelo’s Greek-cross plan into a
longitudinal one, thus reverting to the scheme of early
Christian and Medieval cathedrals. His facade has been both
criticized for impairing the effect of Michelangelo’s dome
and admired for its forceful grouping of huge engaged
columns. The only building completely designed by Maderno is
Santa Maria della Vittoria (1608–20); all his other
projects, such as San Andrea della Valle and the Palazzo
Barberini (1625), were either works he only began or other
architects’ works he finished. The Palazzo Barberini, which
Maderno designed for the family of Pope Urban VIII, was
completed by Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini,
whose works were influenced by Maderno.
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Facade of St. Peter's Basilica
The facade of Santa Susanna, Rome.
Gianlorenzo Bernini, design for the new facade of the Louvre, first
proposal, 1664-65.
Musee du Louvre, Paris.
Francesco Borromini.
As a personality, Bernini represents a type we first met among the
artists of the Early Renaissance, a self-assured, expansive person of
the world. His great rival in architecture,
Francesco Borromini
(1599-1667), was the very
opposite: a secretive and emotionally unstable genius who died by
suicide. The Baroque heightened the tension between the two types. The
temperamental contrast between the two masters would be evident from
their works alone, even without the testimony of contemporary witnesses.
Both exemplify the climax of Baroque architecture in Rome, yet Bernini's
design for the colonnade of St. Peter's is dramatically simple and
unified, while Borromini's structures are extravagantly complex. Bernini
himself agreed with those who denounced Borromini for flagrantly
disregarding the classical tradition, enshrined in Renaissance theory
and practice, that architecture must reflect the proportions of the
human body.
In Borromini's first major project, the church of S. Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane (figs. 756—58),
it is the syntax,
not the vocabulary, that is new and disquieting. The ceaseless play of
concave and convex surfaces makes the entire structure seem elastic,
"pulled out of shape" by pressures that no previous building could have
withstood. The plan is a pinched oval suggesting a distended and
half-melted Greek cross, as if it had been drawn on rubber. The inside
of the dome, too, looks "stretched
:
if the tension were relaxed, it would snap back to normal. The facade
was designed almost 30
years later, and the pressures and counterpressures here reach their
maximum intensity. Borromini merges architecture and sculpture in a way
that must have shocked Bernini. No such fusion had been ventured since
Gothic art. S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane established Borromini's local
and international fame. "Nothing similar," wrote the head of the
religious order for which the church was built, "can be found anywhere
in the world. This is attested by the foreigners who
. . . try to procure copies of
the plan. We have been asked for them by Germans, Flemings, Frenchmen,
Italians, Spaniards, and even Indians."
756.
Francesco Borromini.
Facade, S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome.
1665-67
757. Plan of S. Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane. Begun 1638
758. Dome. S. Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane
Francesco Borromini.
Facade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane.
The design of Borromini's next church, S. Ivo (figs.
759 and
760), is more compact and
equally daring. Its plan, a star-hexagon, belongs unequivocally to the
central type. Here Borromini may have been thinking of octagonal
structures, such as S. Vitale in Ravenna (compare figs.
319-22). But he did not
subdivide the space into a tall, domed "nave" ringed by an ambulatory or
chapels. Instead he covered all of it with one great dome, continuing
the star-hexagon pattern up to the circular base of the lantern. Here
again the concave-convex rhythm dominates the entire design. The
structure might almost be described as a larger version of the Temple of
Venus at Baalbek, turned inside out (see figs.
262 and
263).
A third project by
Borromini is of special interest as a High Baroque
critique of St. Peter's. Maderno had found one problem insoluble:
although his new facade forms an impressive unit with Michelangelo's
dome when seen from a distance, the dome is gradually hidden by the
facade as we approach the church. Borromini designed the facade of S.
Agnese in Piazza Navona (fig. 761)
with this conflict in mind. Its lower part is
adapted from the facade of St. Peter's, but it curves inward, so that
the dome (a tall, slender version of Michelangelo's dome) functions as
the upper part of the facade. The dramatic juxtaposition of concave and
convex, always characteristic of Borromini, is further emphasized by the
two towers, which form a monumental triad with the dome. (Such towers
were also once planned for St. Peter's.) Once again Borromini joins
Gothic and Renaissance features—the
two-tower facade and the dome—into
a remarkably "elastic" compound.
Francesco Borromini.
Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, courtyard and facade.
761.
Francesco Borromini.
S. Agnese in Piazza Navona, Rome. 1653 —
63
761.
Francesco Borromini.
S. Agnese in Piazza Navona, Rome. 1653 —
63
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Francesco Borromini
Francesco Borromini, original name Francesco Castelli (born
Sept. 25, 1599, Bissone, Duchy of Lombardy—died Aug. 2,
1667, Rome), Italian architect who was a chief formulator of
Baroque architectural style. Borromini (who changed his name
in about 1627) secured a reputation throughout Europe with
his striking design for a small church, S. Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, Rome. He differed from Gian Lorenzo Bernini
and other contemporaries in basing his designs on geometric
figures (modules) rather than on the proportions of the
human body.
Youth and education.
Born to Giovanni Domenico Castelli and Anastasia Garogo,
Borromini was introduced to the craft specialities of
architecture when his father sent him to Milan (1608 or
1614) to learn stonecutting. After several years training in
the skills and technology of both architecture and
sculpture, he collected a debt owed to his father and,
without informing his parents, fled to Rome in 1620. There
he became a draftsman and stonemason in the office of his
kinsman, Carlo Maderno, who had established himself as the
major practicing architect in Italy.
Celibate and irascible, Borromini
dedicated himself to the discipline of architecture. Maderno
quickly recognized Borromini’s potential. The aging master
and his young pupil worked together closely on various
problems at St. Peter’s, whose fundamental plan was revised
by Maderno. For the Palazzo Barberini, Maderno determined a
basic concept, then entrusted Borromini with the realization
of specifics. A convergence of both talents produced the
facade design of S. Andrea della Valle, and Borromini was
permitted to undertake the lantern of the church’s dome
himself. Borromini’s personality is apparent in these
projects, though Maderno’s style dominates them. A facade to
be attached to the late 16th-century oval church of S. Anna
dei Palafrenieri was Borromini’s personal project. His
attempt to integrate a five-bay front and two towers with
the existing oval dome prefigured his S. Agnese in Agone (in
Piazza Navona) in its placement of plastic volumes in space.
Equally significant was his transformation of Maderno’s plan
for S. Ignazio. Through his use of pairs of free-standing
columns, he suggested an articulation of space, a major
characteristic of his style. Space in his structures is not
merely a void but rather something corporeal, an element in
itself, molded by the surrounding shell of the building.
Later he would develop this concept by replacing the
enclosing wall with an extensively penetrated framework, as
in the Re Magi chapel.
Maderno died in January 1629, three months
after construction had begun at the Palazzo Barberini. The
famous Gian Lorenzo Bernini was put in charge of this
project, though his architectural abilities were
underdeveloped. Borromini continued in a key position,
working out the specifics of Maderno’s plan and
collaborating successfully with Bernini. The patron,
however, began to draw heavily on the advice of a third
designer, Pietro da Cortona, and eventually abandoned
Maderno’s project for the east facade of the palace. Unable
to work with Cortona and despairing of these changes,
Borromini left the project in 1631. Together with Bernini he
dedicated himself entirely to the task of designing the
baldachin in St. Peter’s, which was conceived as a
monumental canopy raised over the tomb of St. Peter,
recalling the canopy that is traditionally supported over
the pope when he is carried in state through the church. The
enormous bronze baldachin was realized through the closest
cooperation between Borromini and Bernini; the huge,
S-shaped volutes that crown four corkscrew columns are their
most important common creation. Bernini was in command of
all enterprises at St. Peter’s, but he paid Borromini a
substantial sum from 1631 to 1633 for this work, indicating
the great importance of his contribution.
An independent architect.
The baldachin was completed in 1633. The year before, on the
commendation of Bernini and Cardinal Francesco Barberini,
Borromini was awarded the office of university architect.
With his new position as support, he began to seek patronage
as an independent architect. His first independent
commission represented an extraordinary challenge to
tradition; it was the Roman church and monastery of S. Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane, begun in 1638. No larger inside than
the dimensions of a single pier at St. Peter’s, the small
church electrified Rome, and its reputation spread like
wildfire through Europe. Borromini began by stacking
together three distinct units that normally would have been
employed only in separate buildings: a curious, undulating
lower zone; a middle one suggesting the standard Greek-cross
plan; and an oval dome, a relatively new and still
little-used form. This audacious combination of precedent
and novelty is integrated by complex, interweaving rhythms.
Bold, illusionistic effects, achieved by calculated
lighting, intensify the space. The dome appears to be
floating above the interior of the church like a
hallucinatory vision because its springing point and light
sources are concealed by the zone below.
Borromini established contacts with the
eminent Spada family and was also sponsored by Pope Innocent
X for a decade, but his relations with patrons were
frequently stormy and at times reached an impasse because of
his intransigent, defiant attitude. Though bitterly
resentful of what he felt to be a lack of just recognition,
he was indifferent toward wealth and rejected the fashions
of normal dress. Intractable and melancholic, he was
infamous for his fits of rage. On one of his building sites
he was infuriated to discover a man damaging some materials
and had him so violently beaten that he died.
Given Borromini’s gloomy disposition, it
is not surprising that a conflict developed with the famous
and popular Bernini. While they were working together, the
relationship between the two artistic giants had been
mutually profitable: Borromini’s style was injected with a
new vitality under Bernini’s influence, and Bernini was
strongly impressed by Borromini’s novel formulations of
architectural detail. Later, however, a bitter conflict
arose between them. Perhaps Borromini’s subordinate position
at St. Peter’s sufficiently rankled him to provoke his
departure. He definitely felt this way later in life,
claiming that Bernini had begged him not to abandon him on
the work at St. Peter’s and had promised to recognize his
many labours with a worthy reward. Borromini said that after
he had carried out the work, Bernini withheld the
remunerations and rewards and never gave him anything except
good words and grand promises.
Divergent characters, disparate
backgrounds, and different attitudes toward life presumably
provoked the antagonism. Bernini worked easily with the
aristocratic and powerful; immensely successful as a
sculptor and painter as well as an architect, he was
outgoing, charming, and witty. Borromini, on the other hand,
was a lonely, withdrawn man; he prided himself on his highly
specialized training, and he resented his modest degree of
recognition. Conflict between the two became public in 1645
over the decision to eliminate the towers Maderno had
designed for the facade of St. Peter’s. Maderno left them as
substructures, and in 1636 Bernini submitted a proposal for
completing them. After one was erected, however, technical
deficiencies halted further construction in 1641, and four
years later a commission decided on its removal. Borromini
emerged as Bernini’s most effective and destructive critic,
accusing him of incompetence. Bernini seldom indulged in
professional envy, however, but, during his Paris visit of
1665, he accused Borromini of abandoning the anthropometric
basis of architecture. Because the body of Adam was modelled
not only by God but also in his image and likeness, it was
argued, the proportions of buildings should be derived from
those of the body of man and woman. Borromini, however,
based his buildings on geometric configurations in an
essentially medieval manner that he probably learned in
Lombardy, where medieval building procedures had been handed
down from generation to generation. Borromini’s approach
consisted of establishing a geometric figure for a building
or room, then articulating this figure by means of geometric
subunits. He thus stood accused of denying the basis of good
architecture. He never divorced himself completely from the
anthropometric basis of design, however; he insisted, at
least once, that his architecture contained human
references. The concave facade of St. Philip Neri
represented to him the welcoming gesture of outstretched
arms: the central unit stood for the chest, the two-part
wings for arm and forearm.
The bizarre quality of Borromini’s designs
was as unsettling as his departure from anthropomorphism.
Even his supporters felt uneasy with his novel creations.
Presumably his license departed too far from orthodox
interpretations of antiquity, which were accepted at this
time as the fundamental standards of form for architecture.
This seems paradoxical because he was an avid student of the
ancient world: his drawings of antique fragments demonstrate
a critical contact with Roman architecture, and his
evocations of classical thought on the project for the Villa
Pamphili at San Pancrazio are recorded with philological
exactness. Nevertheless, the notion was in the air that it
was possible to use and then progress beyond the
achievements of antiquity, and Borromini strongly identified
with this attitude. He said that he certainly would never
have given himself to architecture with the idea of being
merely a “copyist,” and he invoked the example of
Michelangelo, who said that he who follows others never goes
ahead. Borromini declared antiquity and nature to be his
points of departure (although he included the work of
Michelangelo as well), but he actually spurned the regular
and orthodox compositional motifs of the ancient world.
Instead he turned to novel, curious, and marvelous
interpretations, such as could be found in Hadrian’s Villa
at Tivoli, and to Roman structural achievements, such as
their brickwork and their use of bevelled corners for vault
supports.
Just as Borromini’s attitude toward
antiquity was uncommon, so too were his historical roots in
medieval architecture in an era that had rejected medieval
culture as corrupt. Yet his tendency toward the annulment of
the wall, his use of structural ribwork to strengthen
vaults, his designs derived from geometric configurations,
his use of decorative motifs, and perhaps even his awareness
that light can be given major compositional importance, all
represent ideas that originated in the medieval experience.
Closer to his own time, Borromini investigated certain
formal qualities found in both Florentine architecture of
the 15th century and Mannerist architecture of the 16th
century, especially in that of Michelangelo, whose
architecture was of decisive importance and suggested
Borromini’s still more radical experiments. The manner in
which space seemed to expand and contract in a number of
Michelangelo’s designs indicated to Borromini the dynamic
potential of this medium. Responding to the past with
greater freedom than his contemporaries, Borromini employed
those elements that suited his purposes.
This broad selection of styles was
complemented by his understanding of structures and
materials. The artisan tradition of Lombardy stressed
technical excellence, which provided Borromini with the
knowledge to approach a full range of structural problems.
It gave him a firm base for his technical virtuosity, which
is demonstrated by a long list of achievements. Among these
achievements are: the careful balancing of his towers for
the facade of St. Peter’s; the supporting metal cage for a
barrel vault in the Palazzo Pamphili in Piazza Navona; the
precise brickwork of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri; and his
inventive domes and vaults, such as those of S. Ivo della
Sapienza or the Re Magi chapel. He used the building yard as
an extension of his drafting table and as a place where he
could experiment and improvise to generate a fruitful
exchange between design and execution. At S. Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, for example, the three-dimensional curve of
the arches opening to the chapel vaults, as well as other
features, could not have been realized without Borromini’s
personal guidance of the stonecutters on the site.
Borromini’s urban sensibilities were also
highly developed, as one of his unexecuted schemes
demonstrates. He wished to create a dynamic setting for the
facade of S. Giovanni in Laterano by means of a piazza. The
street passing through this space was to be surrounded by 24
uniform building fronts, establishing a large-scale, tightly
organized arrangement of spaces. Always alert in his
commissions to contextual interpretations, he displayed a
deep sensitivity to the relationship of his buildings to the
surrounding urban fabric. The bell-tower facade of St.
Philip Neri, for example, is composed to conclude and
monumentalize the street running up to it.
Later years and influence.
Even late in his life, Borromini’s innovations continued to
be as energetic and radical as ever. For the Re Magi chapel
in the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, on which he worked until
his death, he designed six pairs of colossal pilasters to
define a generally rectangular space with bevelled corners.
In the 1660s, Borromini’s fortunes
tragically declined. He was increasingly frustrated by the
fame and success of his rival, Bernini. His only disciple,
Francesco Righi, and his most sympathetic patron, Padre
Virgilio Spada, both died early in the decade. His major
commission of S. Agnese in Agone, in Piazza Navona, was
taken from him; work on another of his projects, S. Andrea
delle Fratte, came to a halt; and his facade of St. Philip
Neri was disfigured by lateral extensions. Suffering severe
melancholia, he travelled to Lombardy, but when he returned
to Rome his melancholy returned to him, and he spent whole
weeks without ever leaving his house. Borromini burned all
of his drawings in his possession. Taken ill, his condition
was made worse by hypochondriac hallucinations and, when he
suffered fits, it was decided that he should be denied all
activity so that he might sleep. On a hot summer’s night,
unable to rest and forbidden to work, he arose in a fury,
found a sword, and fell upon it. Borromini recovered a lucid
mind after mortally wounding himself, repented, received the
last sacraments of the church, and wrote his will before he
died. At his own request, he was buried anonymously in the
grave of his teacher and friend, Maderno. It has been
suggested that Borromini’s suicide was the result of an
increasing schizophrenia and that this pathological process
is reflected in his architecture, but this contention is
impossible to demonstrate. His career appears to have been
successful until the disillusionments of the last years.
In denying the restrictive, enclosing
qualities of wall in order to treat space and light as
architectonic components, Borromini confronted his
architectural inheritance with its most complete and
compelling challenge. Scores of designers would capitalize
upon this revolutionary legacy. Borromini’s works from the
first had created an uproar in Rome, and his influence
proved highly suggestive for design in northern Italy and in
central Europe over the course of the next century. Later,
as Neoclassical attitudes gained force, he was increasingly
despised. Largely forgotten during most of the 19th century,
Borromini’s architecture has again been recognized in the
20th century as the creation of genius.
Christian F. Otto
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Francesco Borromini.
Oratory of Saint Phillip Neri
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