Francesco Borromini

Biography

In 1628 Francesco Castelli signed himself “Borromini” for the first time. Many Roman builders bore the surname Castelli, and the new name helped keep them apart. Where it came from is not known for certain: perhaps a family nickname, perhaps respect for Saint Charles Borromeo.

He was born in Bissone on Lake Lugano, in present-day Ticino, which was then part of the Swiss Confederacy. The date of his birth varies between 25 and 27 September 1599; the 25th is adopted here. His father was a stonemason, and his mother, Anastasia Garove, came from a family of builders. In Milan he learned the craft of stone sculptor and studied drawing, and the first document to call him a sculptor is dated 20 December 1618. From 1619 he was increasingly absent from Milan to work on St Peter’s in Rome, and soon moved there for good.

In Rome he was taken in by his maternal uncle, a master stonecutter. Borromini worked first in his workshop, then under Carlo Maderno, a distant relative and the head of works at St Peter’s. Maderno valued him as a carver and draughtsman and made him his assistant. He took part in building the Palazzo Barberini: the oval spiral staircase and the upper-storey windows with their unusual frames are attributed to him. When Maderno died in 1629, direction passed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Borromini remained under him. He is also credited with a share in the bronze canopy of St Peter’s, but the honour and the money went to Bernini alone. Relations between the two soon soured and stayed hostile to the end of his life.

In 1634 the Spanish Trinitarian order commissioned from him the church and monastery of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane on the Quirinal Hill. The site was cramped and stood on a corner, and the building turned out so small that, historians remark, it would fit inside one of the dome piers of St Peter’s. He composed the plan from interlocking geometrical figures: the interior walls seem to move, alluding now to a cross, now to a hexagon, now to an oval, and the same figures recur in the dome, lit by hidden windows. The undulating façade was built only toward the end of his life, and its upper part was finished after his death.

In 1637 he received the commission for the Oratory of the Filippini beside the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella. Its façade is curved brick, and the hall inside is white. His relations with the order were difficult: they argued over the design and the materials, and in 1652 the Filippini appointed another architect. He was helped by Virgilio Spada, a friend and Oratorian; together they wrote down the history of the building, and the book was published in 1725.

Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, the church of the Roman university, was built from the early 1640s until 1660, and many consider it his finest building. It is fitted between existing wings. The centralized plan is built on alternating concave and convex ends of the cornices, and in place of an ordinary dome there is a spiral lantern. Under Pope Innocent X, from 1644 to 1655, Borromini’s affairs went best: he reworked the interior of San Giovanni in Laterano in time for the Jubilee year of 1650, created the “perspective gallery” in the Palazzo Spada (1652–1653), and worked with Rainaldi on the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone on Piazza Navona, then left the project, and his designs were altered. He also worked on Sant’Andrea delle Fratte and on the building of the Propaganda Fide. The gallery in the Palazzo Spada looks very long, though in fact it is about nine metres.

It seems to me that what stands out in these works is not fantasy but calculation. Borromini studied mathematics and assembled a large library. He is quoted as saying that, had he been content to copy, he would never have taken up the profession.

Under Alexander VII, from 1655, commissions grew fewer. Bernini regained the favour of the court, and Borromini increasingly abandoned work he had begun. After finishing the Falconieri chapel in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini he fell gravely ill and no longer left his house. He died on 3 August 1667 (by other accounts, 2 August), having taken his own life, after he had managed to dictate his will. He burned some of his drawings, and most of those that survive are now in the Albertina in Vienna. He was buried, as he had asked, in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, in the tomb of Maderno. In 1955 his name was added to the slab.

From 1976 to 2000 his portrait appeared on the Swiss hundred-franc banknote.