Francesco Borromini

Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), one of the most original and important architects in 17th-century Italy. Along with the works of such other master builders as Gianlorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, Borromini's primarily ecclesiastical structures virtually transformed Rome into a baroque city. Unlike Bernini and Cortona, however, Borromini devoted himself exclusively to architecture, becoming virtually obsessed with finding new and unorthodox uses of space. In his buildings, mass and void combine in a unique manifestation of the baroque love of energetic movement, dynamism, and theatricality.

More than any other architect of his time, Borromini created a sense of visual excitement with his undulating, convex-concave walls complementing rhythmic, inventive floor plans. Borromini did not, however, reject the past to achieve innovation, for he was inspired by both antique and Renaissance architecture. Michelangelo's influence was especially important, as Borromini himself explained in his Opus architectonicum, a treatise written in 1648.

Born September 25, 1599, in Bissone on Lake Lugano, Borromini was originally named Francesco Castelli. He took his mother's last name, Borromini, when he was 28. His father was a stonemason, a craft that Borromini also followed. His earliest work, after arriving in Rome about 1621, was as a stonecutter at Saint Peter's Basilica, then being built under the direction of Carlo Maderno. The older architect so much admired the industrious young man that he made him supervisor of works at both Saint Peter's and the Barberini Palace, another of Maderno's projects. Borromini's bitter rivalry with Bernini began in 1627, when he worked on decorative masonry for Bernini's baldachin (altar canopy) in Saint Peter's.

Not until 1634 was Borromini given his first major architectural commission, the Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1638-41; facade completed 1667). The church's plan is a diamond shaped of two abutting equilateral triangles beneath an oval dome. As were all of Borromini's projects it was created according to strict geometrical proportions. The facade (higher than the church itself) presents an undulating flow of space and is one of baroque Rome's most characteristic monuments.

Borromini built Sant'Ivo della Sapienza between 1642 and 1660, today the church of the University of Rome. Its six-pointed star shape is carried up into its strikingly original hexagonal dome. Borromini's facade (1653-66) for Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona replaced an earlier design. Between 1647 and 1650 he remodeled the Early Christian basilica of Saint John Lateran in a baroque fashion. Borromini's last great project before his death by suicide on Aug 2, 1667, was the design for the Collegio di Propaganda Fide (1646-67), Jesuit headquarters in Rome, a huge palace that again demonstrates an overall geometric unity.