The Venice Biennale di Architettura closes in less than one week, on 21 November 2021, so there are only a few days left to visit! In honour of this great event, we present here an architectural highlight from our upcoming catalogue, Italian Books III: a precious volume containing Francesco Borromini’s Opera and Opus Architectonicum, printed in Rome by Sebastiano Giannini in 1720 and 1725, respectively. If perhaps you find yourself in Milan instead of Venice this weekend, the volume will be exhibited at the 5th Salone della Cultura, to be held at Milan’s iconic Superstudio Più. We also invite you to visit Philobiblon’s new website, now online at philobiblon.org, which includes images of books that will be exhibited at the fair.

The Opera and Opus Architectonicum represent the first and only two installments of Sebastiano Giannini’s intended series on the complete works of pioneering Baroque architect Francesco Borromini (1599-1667). They result from a publication project initiated by Borromini himself but left unfinished at the time of his death and realized by Giannini in two of the most beautiful architecture books ever printed.

Born Francesco Castelli in the village of Bissone, in the southernmost canton of Switzerland, Borromini moved first to Milan, where he studied masonry and sculpture, and then to Rome, where he made his career as one of the most important architects of the seventeenth century. His influences ranged from Michelangelo to classical antiquity, nature and mathematics, but he was above all committed to originality and re-envisioned each of these sources, along with many others, to create some of the most ingenious and breathtaking examples of High Baroque architecture.

Borromini was also an outstanding draughtsman and unusual for his time in his preference for using fine, sharply pointed graphite pencils for his drawings, which allowed him to create remarkably clear renderings. Around 1659/1660 he decided to present several of his drawings in a publication and to this end had them engraved by Domenico Barrière (ca. 1615-1678), a former student of Claude Lorraine. The project was left unfinished at Borromini’s suicide in 1667, shortly before which he had also burned many of the drawings and prints. A number of them did, however, survive and were passed onto his nephew Bernardo Borromini; after Bernardo’s death in 1709, they were then acquired by the Roman editor Giannini, who set out to finish what Borromini had started and publish his work for a broader audience to appreciate and enjoy.

The first of Giannini’s two publications, the Opera, is devoted to Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza (1643-1664), the chapel of the Roman university and arguably Borromini’s most iconic and complex design, which Giannini represents in 46 plates. Some of these come from the acquired copper plates etched by Barrière (often adapted somewhat by Giannini), as with plate VI, showing the building’s myriad juxtapositions of convex and concave forms – a hallmark of Borrimini’s architecture – and fantastic lantern and spiral, added by the architect under the pontificate of Innocent X.

Barrière’s work may also be behind, among others, the well-known plate X, presenting the chapel as organized around the shape of a bee, the famous heraldic device of Matteo Barberini, i.e. Pope Urban VIII, who was originally responsible for appointing Borromini to the project.

Interior of the dome at Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza.

To round out the publication, Giannini also commissioned engravings from contemporary artists, some after Borromini’s drawings and drawings by his assistant Francesco Righi (likewise acquired through the Borromini estate) and others of the building as it stood in 1720. A notable example of a later plate is the final (unnumbered), double-page engraving of the groundplan constructed on the basis of two superimposed equilateral triangles. This is a departure from Borromini’s single-triangle plan and a superfluous addition (in terms of construction detail) but one that proved extremely influential to subsequent understandings of the chapel’s design, and is indeed still often taken as representative of Borromini’s original concept. (J. Connors, “S. Ivo Alla Sapienza: The First Three Minutes”, p. 50).

The Oratorio dei Filippini (1637-1650) in Rome.

Opus Architectonicum, the second volume presented here, is devoted to the Oratorio dei Filippini, the oratory and residence quarters of the Congregation of St. Philip Neri. In contrast to the Opera, which involves no text apart from the publisher’s short preface and captions to the plates, this volume couples 67 engravings and etchings with an important 31-page text based on a manuscript written by Borromini and the Oratorian father Virgilio Spada (1596-1662) in 1646-1647 (MS C.II.6 of the Archivio della Congregazione dell'Oratorio a S. Maria in Vallicella). This text in fact represents Borromini’s first publishing effort. Titled “Piena relatione della fabbrica”, it provides an account of the design and construction of each room and is enriched with insight into Borromini’s creative process and the relationship between patron and architect. Spada amassed a number of drawings for the monograph but was never able to realize its publication. Giannini presents it here and includes a Latin translation to accompany the Italian text, thus providing the basis for the “new” title, Opus Architectonicum.

As with the Opera, the Opus contains a combination of earlier and later prints, with Giannini again known to have modified some of Barrière’s originals. This is the case in plate V, for example, which shows the façade of the building with spiral columns around the main portal added by Giannini.

Plate V of *Opus Architectonicum*, showing the façade of the Oratorio dei Filippini in Rome.

Giannini’s modifications and later additions — thoroughly described by Joseph Connors in the introduction to his edited edition of the Opus Architectonicum (Milan 1998) and elsewhere — point up the great historical complexity of the material enclosed in these two volumes of fundamental importance to Borromini studies. In addition to the difficulties of working with idealized architectural drawings while also representing ideas, designs, and constructions subject to substantial change over lengthy building periods, they also highlight the efforts of an enterprising editor keen to ensure the success of Borromini’s reputation.

In this respect Connors’s insightful remarks on Giannini’s inclusion, in both volumes, of the famous engraved portrait of Borromini with the Supreme Order of Christ – one of few known images of the architect – is particularly noteworthy. Highly similar to the fictive portrait of Palladio in Giacomo Leoni’s 1716 translation of the Quattro Libri, it may represent, as Connors convincingly argues, a rebuttal to contemporary Neo-palladian condemnation of Borromini as expressed in, among others, Colen Campbell’s attack on the architect as having “endeavoured to debauch Mankind with his odd and chimerical Beauties” (C. Campbell, Introduction to Vitruvius Britannicus, 1715).

By the time of Giannini’s own death in the 1730s, at least two more volumes of Borromini’s work were planned, with the third installment set to address S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Borromini’s first solo commission from 1734, the church’s pulsating walls and complex geometrical plan offered a clear statement that Borromini was to be a force in architectural history, and he punctuated that statement with the marvelous undulating façade added to the building near the end of his life. While the secrets of San Carlino would have to wait until the twentieth century to finally be unveiled, Giannini’s handsome volumes devoted to the Baroque jewels of S. Ivo della Sapienza and the Oratorio di S. Filippo Neri uniquely allow these masterpieces to be seen in the full richness of their evolving histories.

A. Blunt, Borromini, London 1979; J. Connors, Borromini and the Roman Oratory, New York 1980, esp. pp. 263-269 (cat. 89-90); 281-282 (cat. 104); 285-288 (cat. 110); J. B. Scott, “S. Ivo alla Sapienza and Borromini's Symbolic Language”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 41 (1982), pp. 294-317 (esp. pp. 298-299); J. Connors, “Sebastiano Giannini: Opus Architectonicum”, B. Contardi – G. Curcio (eds.), In Urbe Architectus: modelli disegni misure: La professione dell'architetto in Rome 1680-1750, Rome 1991, esp. pp. 207-209; Idem, “S. Ivo Alla Sapienza: The First Three Minutes”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 55 (1996), pp.38-57; F. Borromini, Opus architectonicum, ed. J. Connors, Milan 1998; J. Connors, “Francesco Borromini. La vita (1599–1667),” R. Bösel – C. L. Frommel (eds.) Borromini e l’universo barocco, Milan 1999, pp. 7-21; J. M. Smyth-Pinney, “Borromini's Plans for Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 59 (2000), pp. 312-337; K. Downes, Borromini’s Book, the ‘Full Relation of the Building’ of the Roman Oratory, Wetherby 2009.

How to cite this information

Julia Stimac, "Publishing Borromini's Masterpieces of the Baroque," 17 November 2021, www.prphbooks.com/blog/borromini. Accessed [date].

This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.