Francesco Borromini

Summary of Francesco Borromini

Borromini was one of the most innovative architects of the seventeenth century, and one-third of the trio of artists that defined the Roman Baroque style. But unlike the sculptor-architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and the painter-architect Pietro da Cortona, Borromini was consumed only with an architectural practice in which he was, in the words of the 17^th century historian and biographer Filippo Baldinucci, "utterly immersed and engrossed in continuous thought". In his day, Borromini was maligned by many critics for being overelaborate and decorative (thereby violating the rules of classical proportion). Yet his single-mindedness, and his readiness to explore novel approaches to spatial compositions, have seen him labeled latterly as heir to Michelangelo's architectural legacy. Borromini was an anguished and solitary soul who eventually took his own life. Today, the originality of his vision, coupled with the story of his self-destructive personal struggles, has secured him the status of the "tormented and misunderstood genius".

Accomplishments

• Although attacked by his opponents for being "extravagant" and "Gothic", Borromini was in fact a committed student of antiquity. His formal language was grounded in the classical canon and the legacy of Michelangelo. However, Borromini brought a unique fluency and expressiveness to his designs. Buildings such as Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza (1642-60) were revolutionary in the way Borromini treated light and space as key architectonic components. The originality of his vision can also be identified in his preference for ovals rather than circles, and for his love of undulating architectural columns.
• Borromini's talents followed two complementary paths. A consummate stonemason, he was as much a master with the chisel as he was with the pencil. His dexterity with the former is evident in an array of decorative figures and symbolic objects. His interior for the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, for instance, is decorated with beautifully sculpted adornments such as angels, clusters of eggs, crowns, bouquets of flowers, and, on the stars that shrink in scale as they reach up towards the famous lantern that sits atop the church's dome.
• Recently, scholars have taken a special interest in Borromini's spatial and optical illusions. In his design for the arcade courtyard for the Palazzo Spada (1660), for instance, he created the illusion of spatial depth by way of forced perspective. Such was the success of his design that the eight-meter-long gallery gave the appearance of being over four times that length. Borromini enhanced the optical illusion by installing a sculpture of Mars at the top of the passageway. Just sixty centimeters tall, when viewed down through the columns of the corridor the trompe-l'oeil effect makes Mars appear life-sized.
• Given Borromini's irascible temperament, and Bernini's more genial disposition (and greater public recognition), it would only be a matter of time before the two colleagues would enter into a bitter rivalry. However, before they went their separate ways, their relationship had proved mutually beneficial. Borromini's style took on a new theatrical vitality, while Bernini learned from Borromini's originality and a fetish-like attention to decorative detail.

The Life of Francesco Borromini

Progression of Art

Biography of Francesco Borromini

Childhood

Francesco Castelli, known to us today as Borromini, was born in Bissone, in the Swiss canton of Ticino, to Giovanni Domenico Castelli, a stonemason, and Anastasia Garogo. Historian Maria Felicia Nicoletti writes, his father "also known as 'Il Bissone' [was] in the service of the noble Visconti Borromeo family. His mother, Anastasia, came from the Garvo (or Garovi) family, who had consolidated their socio-economic status with the help of two brothers, Leone (Anastasia's father and Borromini's grandfather) and Francesco, both admired architects in the far-flung regions of Moravia and Bohemia". Following in his father's footsteps, Francesco began his own apprenticeship as a stonemason aged just nine years old.

Education and Early Training

Francesco's father dispatched his son to Milan in 1608 to gain practical experience in masonry, and stonecutting, which he did by assisting in the building of Milan's cathedral (the Metropolitan Cathedral-Basilica of the Nativity of Saint Mary, to give it its proper name). Nicoletti writes, "His arrival [in Milan] coincided with the canonisation of Saint Charles Borromeo (1610), the most influential citizen of the second half of the 16th century, whose pastoral spirit, driven by a keen sense of obligation, had made a significant mark not only on the religious but also on the artistic and architectural worlds [...] The atmosphere in Milan therefore offered a wealth of religious debate and intellectual stimulation, which clearly influenced the inquisitive and receptive personality of the young boy from Ticino".

In 1619, Borromini moved on to Rome where he was, in the words of Borromini's nephew, Bernardo, ready to "to see the great things of that city he had heard so much about". It is believed that Borromini financed his move by unscrupulously collecting on a debt that was in fact owed to his father. On his way to Rome, he took in other cities, including Ravenna and Sienna, from where he took further inspiration from architectural masterpieces. Once in Rome, he took lodgings with his cousin, Leone Garvo, who secured him a job as a stonemason on the construction of St. Peter's Basilica. Borromini first worked as a decorative sculptor for his uncle, Carlo Maderno, himself considered one of the forefathers of Baroque architecture.

Nicoletti writes, "[Maderno's] depository of incomparable technical expertise, which had enabled obelisks and columns to be erected in piazzas across Rome, his knowledge of hydraulics required to build aqueducts, fountains, water features in the city and suburban villas and, finally, his organisational abilities, which had allowed him to manage multiple projects at once, were now all at Borromini's disposal, who would not fail to make them his own and apply them in his future professional work". While working for him on the Palazzo Barberini, Maderno sadly passed away (in January 1629) from kidney disease, leaving Borromini and architect Pietro da Cortona to continue the Palazzo under the direction of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Borromini and da Cortona had a combustible relationship and in a fit of pique Borromini walked out on the project in 1631.

Between 1631 and 1633, Borromini partnered with Bernini to execute Maderno's design for the baldachin of St. Peter's Basilica, a monumental bronze canopy above the tomb of St. Peter. Borromini was particularly insulted at the "economic injustice" of being paid 25 scudi against Bernini's fee of ten times that sum. Borromini told his friend, Virgilio Spada, "What galls me is not that he [Bernini] had the money, but that he enjoys the honour of my efforts". While working on the St. Peter's project, Borromini was however recommended by Bernini and Cardinal Francesco Barberini (the pope's nephew) for the office of university architect.

At this time, Borromini began to seek patronage as an independent architect (the tragic death of Leone as result of an accident at St. Peter's Basilica saw him inherit his cousin's marble and other architectural effects). The architecture historian Johnathan Glancey writes that Borromini set up on his own as an architect in 1633 and it was in fact at this point that "he changed his name to Borromini - a play, perhaps, on both St Charles Borromeo, whose name graced his first solo commission, the breathtaking Roman church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, and on his rival Bernini, the 'Uomo Universale'" (Bernini earned the title of "universal man" on grounds of his versatility; an man who was accomplished equally as an architect, sculptor, and even set designer). Borromini's first significant independent commission was for the Roman church and monastery of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, built for the Spanish Trinitarians, an order dedicated to the freeing of Christian slaves. In bringing his uniquely independent vision to the project, Borromini had announced the theatrical Baroque style that would become his trademark.

While working at St. Peter's, Borromini had spent his downtime studying Michelangelo's architecture, and from which he produced numerous sketches. As art historian Noah Resnick writes, "Borromini in many ways saw himself as [Michelangelo's] spiritual heir, and it can be argued that he alone among Michelangelo's successors understood and meaningfully developed the fundamental innovations and discoveries his architecture exhibited". Resnick adds that Borromini "truly loved Michelangelo's buildings, and thus subscribed to the principles on which they relied: inventiveness of plan; plastic treatment of the wall; carefully thought-out details; and fundamental knowledge and subsequent reinterpretation of Vitruvian rules. All of these principles were combined with an expertise in mechanics as well as skill in construction and craft. [...] Michelangelo's influence, however, was more than a matter of details and convergence of taste and style. It was also found in Borromini's spatial order and its relationship to movement. In his [perspective] theories and methods, Borromini expanded on Michelangelo's fundamental concept of a building's relation to the human body in motion".

Mature Period

Over the following decade, Borromini received patronage from the prominent Spada family as well as Pope Innocent X. However, given his obstinate personality, his relationships with his patrons tended to be rather fractious. He was notoriously headstrong and argumentative, and expressed his perceived eccentricity through his curious choice of clothing. As Glancey explains, "Driven, studious, solitary, dressed in austere Spanish fashion, unmarried and probably chaste, Borromini set up home with an assistant and housekeeper in sparsely furnished rooms near San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. There was a bust of his hero, Michelangelo, a plaster cast of the Stoic philosopher, Seneca, and a library of around 1,000 books. It was here that he dreamed up his complex designs in the knowledge that 'in inventing new things one cannot receive the fruit of one's labour except later'". It was also in the solitary confines of his rooms that he "brooded on his rivalry with Bernini, a gregarious womaniser who, when he did marry, lived in a palace fit for a pope [...] Where Bernini was suave, Borromini was grave; where Borromini worried, Bernini celebrated."

Borromini was also known to be susceptible to fierce fits of rage. Indeed, while renovating the interior of the Basilica of St John Lateran, he found an altar boy named Marco Antonio Bussoni vandalizing some of his ornate marble sculptures. Borromini was so enraged he instructed his workers to punish the boy, who was later discovered bound and beaten to death. Despite being investigated by the police, Borromini escaped punishment via a papal pardon. Commenting on his ill temperament, the historian Ivan Battista notes that "[Borromini's] 'fiery' character, as the Tuscans had it, [was] reminiscent of the 'wild' personality of another great Baroque artist who had also left the misty north for sunny Rome to seek his fortune: Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio".

Late Period

Borromini's mood of resentment stemmed from the belief that his achievements did not receive the recognition they deserved. His conflict with Bernini came to a head when the two disagreed over whether or not to eliminate the towers that Maderno had originally designed for the facade or St. Peter's Basilica. Earlier, in 1636, Bernini had successfully submitted a proposal for completing them as planned. But after the completion of the first tower in 1641, it was found to be structurally deficient. In 1645, a commission elected to have the tower removed, and Borromini was publicly vocal in his criticism of Bernini's incompetence. Soon after, in 1647, Borromini won the commission to design the renovation of Piazza Navona. Bernini scorned his rival's plans and even presented his own, much more elaborate project. Able to use his own papal connections, Bernini won the commission to design the Piazza's resplendent Fontana die Quattro Fiumi (the Fountain of the Four Rivers featured four river gods representing the major rivers of the four continents). To the general onlooker, it was assumed that Bernini covered the face of the Nile river god (who holds his robe in front of his face) to indicate the fact that the source of the Nile was still relatively unknown. But legend has it that Bernini covered the face of the Nile statue so he was not forced to gaze upon "the disgrace" of the church of Sant'Agnese, designed by Borromini, and located directly in front of the fountain. Not to be outdone, Borromini placed a statue of Sant'Agnese at the foot of the church's bell tower with its face turned away to one side as an expression of its contempt for the ugliness of Bernini's the fountain.

The antipathy between the two men carried on into 1665 when Bernini accused Borromini of rejecting the anthropometric basis of architecture. Indeed, Bernini called Borromini's architectural plans "extravagant" and labelled him an "ignorant Goth who had corrupted architecture". As architectural historian Christian F. Otto explains, "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 [ergo Gothic] manner that he probably learned in Lombardy, where medieval building procedures had been handed down from generation to generation".

The early 1660s were an emotionally difficult period for Borromini, with his sole apprentice, Francesco Righi, and the patron with whom he had formed a close friendship, Padre Virgilio Spada, both passed away within a short space of time. Around the same time, Borromini was relieved of his duties on the Piazza Navona, work was halted on his Sant'Andrea delle Fratte project, and his facade of St. Philip Neri was disfigured by lateral extensions. Evidently, all of these disappointments assailed his already fragile psyche, and he became increasingly reclusive, refusing to leave his rooms for weeks at a time. He burned all of his drawings and began to suffer from hypochondria and hallucinations.

Borromini committed suicide in Rome in the summer of 1667, shortly after the completion of the Falconieri Chapel in the Basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. As architectural historian Kerry Downes notes, in a truly dramatic and theatrical style (mirroring the Baroque sensibility in general), he met his end by running himself through with a sword. The injury was not immediately fatal, and the wounded, bleeding artist lived twenty-four hours more, during which he managed to repent, receive the last sacraments of the church, and write his final will before passing away.

Considering the numerous reports of his distressed mental state throughout his life, scholars generally agree that the suicide was likely the result of a lifelong battle with nervous disorders and depressions (and possibly even schizophrenia). Borromini had requested to be buried in the same tomb as Carlo Maderno in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, leading to the question of whether he spent his final years believing that he was in fact designing his own final resting place. He also requested that his name not be placed at his burial site, and this wish was granted, until recently when his name was added to a marble plaque below Maderno's tomb. His name was also inscribed on a commemorative plaque commissioned by the Swiss embassy in Rome to be placed on a pillar of the church. Borromini's legacy was also honored by being featured on the 100 Swiss Franc banknote, in circulation between 1976 to 2000. Borromini's book, Full Relation, a transcript of his working methods as told to Virgilio Spada, was finally published in 1725.

The Legacy of Francesco Borromini

Unlike his fierce rival, Bernini, who preferred to secure his designs on the proportions of "rational geometry", Borromini placed "emotional theatricality" center and forefront of his architecture. His preference for complex geometric and curvilinear forms, coupled with his dramatic interplay of dark and light, and ornate decoration earned his churches the collective title, "theaters of Catholicism". Art historian John Hatch describes Borromini's vision as "divine geometry", a style influenced by bold, revolutionary thinkers of the century, like Galileo, who believed that nature and geometry are inseparable, and Kepler, who viewed curves as representative of God (whereas the straight line represents man). His churches, that art historian Livio Pestilli suggests are possessed of a "cosmic or 'heavenly' symbolism", influenced designs in northern Italy and across central Europe for a century or more after his death.

Historian Carla Mazzarelli writes, "Considered a mere anomaly or peculiarity in the 1700s and thus a symptom of the decadence of Renaissance culture, it was the reinterpretation of the Swiss historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), which came to see the Baroque as 'a powerful manifestation of art' and 'an irresistible force of nature', recognising its revolutionary potential and enhancing its linguistic details, that finally restored its reputation; Borromini's architecture then regained its place in history and went on to be frequently quoted in modern critical literature as a precursor to examples of the language of contemporary architecture during the first half of the 20th century". As the architectural critic Johnathan Glancey put it, "Rivals, polemicists, anti-Catholics, architects, and historians did their best for centuries to thrust a sword through Borromini's reputation. Today, he is recognized as one of the greats - an architect who gave us classicism with passion, experimentation, movement, prayer and sensuality".

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