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Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane S. Carlino S. His famous gallery, designed with an illusionistic effect of perspective, has an unexpected wit that must have helped to make Borromini's name known.
Far more important was Borromini's work at S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, begun in This tiny church, along with its courtyard, is one of the most important monuments of the baroque style in Rome. The work was divided into two phases almost 30 years apart, with the cloister and church designed and largely built in the s and the facade designed in and still incomplete at Borromini's death in Owing to the fortunate survival of a considerable number of Borromini's drawings, it is possible to trace the evolution of the ground plan of S.
Carlo from a straightforward oval on the long axis of the church, of the type which had been introduced into Rome in the late 16th century by Giacomo Vignola and others, to the present, extraordinarily complex series of curves and countercurves. In its final form the plan creates an undulating movement, so that all the walls of the church, both at ground level and at cornice level, seem to be in motion.
What is more, the plan is not quite the same at ground level as it is at the cornice. Above the cornice there is an extraordinarily complicated transition, from quadrant arcs, via spandrels containing not-quite-circular roundels, to the simple elliptical shape of the dome, which in turn is complicated by an unusual pattern of coffering, based on octagons and the cross-shaped emblem of the Spanish order for whom the church was built.
Borromini's next major work, the Oratory of S. Filippo Neri, begun in for the Congregation of the Oratory, is much less daring in plan than S. Carlo, though the facade breaks new ground by receding in a shallow concave curve. The introduction of movement into the facade reached its highest point in Borromini's later works, such as the facades of S. Agnese and S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. The facade of S. Carlo has a very marked concave-convex-concave movement in the lower story, but in the upper story Borromini introduced a small semicircular pavilion, above which he placed a large oval supported by angels.
Bernini needled him, but after his death, he told Spada that "only Borromini understood this profession, but that he was never content and that he wanted to hollow out one thing inside another, and another inside that without ever getting to the end. It was not until the s that German art historians began to reassess Borromini, and only in the s that his genius was revived and restored. In Britain, the baroque had been associated with papal conspiracies and over-elaborate decoration.
Even Wren had been written off by the Palladians. Borromini was far beyond the pale. Until recently, there have been historians who have denied the very existence of an English baroque; English Baroque Architecture was the title of Kerry Downes's first important book.
The baroque, though, began to appeal, at first surreptitiously, not just to those who looked to Rome — as Evelyn Waugh had — but also to those such as Blunt whose ostensibly uptight, upright manner fronted hidden passions — among them his sexuality — and who sought subversion Blunt was a Soviet spy.
So, the baroque became a cloak-and-dagger saga — a story lived out behind crimson Roman Catholic and blood-red Communist curtains, while Borromini became a suicidal papal knight — a hero. And for Downes, there was something else. His father, Ralph Downes, a Catholic convert, was a distinguished organist. From a spell at the new chapel of Princeton University in the s and 30s, he moved to London's Brompton Oratory, an offshoot of the Roman Oratory. He was a classicist who became an early champion of the baroque.
Kerry absorbed his father's passions, and his youthful love of architecture was centred at first on Wren, Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh, before travel led him in the late s to Rome and to Borromini. I come from a family of artists and engineers, farmers and builders. My great-grandfather was a locomotive designer; from them I can see that he was far from mad.
Born Francesco Castelli, the son of a stonemason, near Lake Lugano in Switzerland, he is better known by his adopted name, Borromini. He started out as a stone mason, but at the age of 20 moved to Rome, where he worked initially with his relative, the architect Carlo Maderno on St Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Following Maderno's death he and Pietro da Cortona continued working on the Palazzo, under the supervision of Bernini - an experience which contributes to his lifelong jealousy. As a young man he was a great admirer of the architecture of Michelangelo , as well as the forms of Roman architecture whose geometric principles he manipulated to create a unique, if unconventional, personal style.
In , he was given his first major commission: the church, cloister and monastery of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. After this he was appointed architect for the dome and facade of the Palazzo Sapienza and Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza He was originally recommended for the latter project back in , by none other than Bernini. Both these early commissions went well.
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