Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture, Part 11: The Elusive Genius of Borromini

One of the most imaginative architects in history, Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), came out of the quarries of Switzerland to transform the face of Baroque Rome. Masterpieces like San Carlo alle Quattro Fontana and Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza have long entered the canon of architectural history. This master builder, pioneer of the graphite revolution in draftsmanship, was both a connoisseur of history and an apostle of inventiveness. In this lecture, Joseph Connors will outline his search over five decades for ways of repositioning an elusive genius in the culture of his time.

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Transcript

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Have had, a course taken that he gave in Rome, in a Rome third year program, on Renaissance and post Renaissance architecture. How many of you were his students in Rome in this room? a healthy number. I hope he does not feel particularly self-conscious by my taking the liberty of reading through his vitae, because I would like, the students to know what an extraordinary person, professor Connors is in the world of art history and how important he continues to be. at this point, what a privilege has been for you to have him as a teacher. Joe studied, at Boston College and at Prince and at, excuse me, at Cambridge University, sorry, followed by art history at Harvard, where he got a PhD in 1978, he started the University of Chicago, 78 to 80 at Columbia from 80 to 2001. And he has held fellowships from many distinguished institutions, including the NEH, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Gallery of Art, the William Teka Ziana in Rome, SAS College, Oxford, and the Clark Institute. He was slate professor at Oxford in 1999. he was elected to the academia at Ali De Saint Luca and Rome in 93, and to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 2006. From 19 19 88 to 92, he was director of the ER Academy in Rome. And from 2002 to 2010, director of Vile Tati, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, he has served on the advisory board of the Chen Palladium Vicenza since 1993. And he was president of Renaissance Society of America in 19, in 2014 to 16. And since 2021, he's been teaching at the Rome program for, Notre Dame University. He has published books on bar architecture, Roman Urban Planning Architecture, and Prince Pian Flank, Frank Lloyd Wright. And he's in the process of completing the long-term project of a comprehensive monograph on Francesco Bonini, which, he is going to be talking about today, continuing themes of architecture society that inform all of his writings. It is with great pride and pleasure that I present you our very own professor, Joseph Connors.

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Thank you. Thank you very much Stefanos, both for the, kind introductions and for the invitation to come. we can

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Okay.

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it's not my first time, in South Bend. I've come several times before. First in the days of my good friend Thomas Gordon Smith, whom I knew from my Rome days, and then Dean LA's, under his deanship. both have been wonderful visits. I first went to Rome in 1972 and lived about four or 500 yards from what is now the Notre Dame Center. when I was there, I read for the first time, Git has. Italian journey and was extremely moved by this wonderful piece of literature, especially by his emphasis that when you go to Rome, you are reborn. And I felt in that time as a youngish grad student that I was being reborn on the Chao. In any case, I'm extremely grateful to the Rome program for the chance to go back to Rome. For these past three years, it's been, to see Rome again in the context of wonderfully supportive colleagues of students who wear out their shoes, who know how to walk, and who are talented and tireless Sketchers. When you're sitting in a church and the students behind you say, pass me some water. It's not for a drink, it's for the watercolors. in any case, it's been absolutely fantastic and I'd love to thank Notre Dame for allowing me these three years of still a second rebirth. Francesco Boro's life began and ended at the water's edge. In 1599. In the hamlet of Bene that you see in the middle of the lake of Luo. not so far from Luo itself in what is now Canton t Chino in Switzerland. he died. That's the little town. He died by his own hand in 1667 on the house, on the Bank of the Ty near San Giovanni de Fiorentini. Apart from a teenage apprenticeship in Milan, his entire career was spent in Rome. Here he would develop into one of the most imaginative designers in the history of Italian architecture, with Michelangelo and Palladio as his peers. Though Boin took a second seat to Bernini during his last tumultuous decades, 50 years after his death, publishers ized him, architects from Portugal to Bohemia, reveled in the curve in perforated walls and daring vaults and magic effects of light. The fall from grace. The age of Neoism was precipitous, but the recovery in the 20th century complete, or at least I hope the book I am trying to write will make it. now in most places, I would come and give a lecture of Boorman's Early Work is this, and then in 30 minutes his middle work And then at the end, I would say his late work is this, since everybody at Notre Dame knows Rome what I will do now is just show about six of his key works for a few seconds. to remind you or refresh your memories of what I'm sure you've seen. Certainly my students have seen. And then I'll get onto the subject. It's slightly misnamed. It shouldn't be called Borini, an introduction. It's Borini my introduction. It's the introduction to this book that I'm finishing right now. It's what the reader will see when he opens the book. By the way, it's more interesting than the date. In his mid thirties, the famous cortille of, San Carino in this amazing, church. Then, the first work that was really visible to the public'cause San Carino didn't have a facade at first. the oratory of the Philippi Opini next to the Church of Santa Maria and Ella seen here in this beautiful raking spring light. you can tell something's wrong with this building on the left. If a church like the one on the right has one window, Hey, wait a minute. The building on the left has 20 windows. It must be something different going on behind it. And of course The most famous building is the Church of St. Evil. A church, a university chapel begun in his 42nd year. It went on for almost two decades. it's the most interpreted or perhaps over interpreted building in the history of architecture. And it is one of the most stimulating and amazing. Many of you know it, and many of you have been in for Sunday mass

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or

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famous for its spiral. Bo was involved in six libraries. This is more than any other architect in Rome. Only Bal Dari Longa in Venice did as many libraries. Bernini did one and thought about another one at some point, but there's no comparison. He's a man with a tremendous collection of books. for the day. 900 books was an enormous personal library, fitting that he's the architect chosen to do the most libraries. this is just two, an early one in the Valley cell and a late one at the Sapienza Saint Evil. He also worked on two buildings for religious women. One is a convent for singing Nuns Santo, Lucia, and Sechi, where the outside is so grim and boring that I don't even wanna show it to you. That's what convent life could be like. It's for groups of noble women who wanted to live together under the aegis of a very powerful and interesting noble woman herself of rna unfinished RAs, now a luxury hotel. there's three, there are three export products alters made in Rome and sent somewhere else, or at least the drawings made in Rome. There's one in Sienna, which I discovered. there was one meant for Lisbon, which was partly sent and then lost. but the most beautiful of Boin work, I think, is this fantastic marble altar in a church you never go to in Naples. Even the Neapolitan aficionados don't usually get here, the Church of San Postly in Naples, but I show it as I think just an amazingly beautiful thing done at the same time as the Oratory. In about age 40 in midlife, he reconstructed, restored. The Larin Basilica, the Cathedral of Rome, the seed of the Bishop of Rome, not St. Peter's, but the larin, a constantinian wreck that was falling down and much retouched. he finally restored it or refashioned it in ways that are controversial, but at the same time, giving us, especially in the isles that you see on the right, some of the most beautiful works of 17th century architecture. He, did six palaces. Or what happens in this period usually is pieces of palaces, wings of palaces. The Palazzo Spa was done before his time, but he, had a hand and adding what was probably the cheapest, but has become the most symbolic work of his career. The little prospective colon aid, the prospecta added as a garden folly in a way. I'll get back to that in the lecture. The propaganda fee day is a work he worked on for most of middle age. his later decades. the fantastic chapel with the rib vault and that, amazing curve near Piazza, is, one of the great works. because it's part of the Vatican City state, it's very seldom entered the chapel sometimes with permission. The inside, never yet. It's a fascinating building that I've explored a lot. the first work was San Carino, but the last work is the facade of San Carino done in the last two years of his life. And I'll talk more about this, but it's an amazing essay in the curve. Okay, that's my survey of his career. Now, onto the lecture. The forthcoming book, I call it, the Architect in Society, takes on three difficult tasks. One, visual appreciation of complex architecture. Two. A study of the shifting social fabric of Baroque Rome. Three. A biography of a hyperactive man who imparted his inner life to almost no one. The following reflections on method set forth the ways in which I try to go about each of these tasks. Architecture, close looking. Each chapter in the book, begins with an exercise in close looking. And there I want to focus on works that are strangely beautiful. While remaining open to the unexpected, the jarring and the confrontational. Bo Arminius facades asked to be seen by the spectator in motion the interiors invite exploration even nosiness in penetrating beyond the usual roots to hidden pockets of space. Rewards for the truly curious bini counted on movement to convey meaning, and often programmed an e tear that could be imagined by all, even of traversed, only by a few. Master psychologist, he found ways. To challenge the visitor's perception of the shape of buildings and the ways they interact with urban space. sensitive to sound as well as sight. He expected the visitor to delight in music coming from hidden balconies and savor the spoken word, whispered along curving walls. How were these buildings projected? He refused the commonplace not only in architecture, but in drawing. His first mentor car Moderno 1620s here. his twenties, treasured the flawless pen and wash drawings that the young man produced for him. That was his first job in the busy shop in the last years of the old Titan's life. But when Borini came into his own after Moderna's death in 1629, He renounced the allure of color to explore the creative possibilities of the graphite pencil, a relatively new material, then confined to the manual trades, picture the carpenter with the pencil behind his ear and so forth. Not for high class drawings, but it was a pencil plan of the Ade Fini that won him his first commission. And a few small pencil drawings that convinced Pope Innocent to have him restore the Cathedral of Rome. Saint John Larin patrons admired the exactness of these drawings and the ways they made problems seem both solved and still open. Some have an x-ray quality as though one could see through. Pencil allowed the architect to treat space like sculpture, making it more fluid without losing its core geometry. It facilitated the many layered plans, sometimes as complex as six or seven layers deep. To study these enigmas. the scholar engages in a close looking that one might call graphite archeology, attempting to see through upper layers until primal ideas swim into focus. For min owned a dozen encompasses and their intensive use brought drama to the drawings in the popular imagination. His most characteristic creation is the curve facade. A French writer says he's enemy of, flat faces adding that there's no straight lines in any of his work, which is of course an exaggeration for the orator. At Tan Marine Ella, he created a curved facade or rather a curved central section in a wider facade. It is a brilliant exercise in high relief, whereas the usual, equipments of a counter reformation facade, span the transition from a wider, lower to a narrower upper story. They're all there, but they're applied to a wing with 20 windows. They're like painting on the wall, sculpting in high relief on the wall, rather than building from nothing, the curving parts were done in Roman brick with near invisible joins. They made the architect think of a single piece of terracotta fired in a colossal oven. That's his metaphor. The facade offered an organ tone of welcome to a medium sized oratory, only the small, lower part of the building as the oratory itself. that takes up only these few bays. Boarini compared the facade to a welcoming embrace. It defers to the massive travertine facade of the church next to it in material and size, but out competes it in audacity, Bo Arminius facades do not just occupy urban space. They interact with it. The curve of the oratory facade is generated in the early drawings by a long radius. One that would fit within the limits of the vast piazza then being planned when Boin redrew the facade. years later, the piazza had not been done and it was not feasible anymore. The Piazza was going to be narrower, so therefore the radius becomes shorter. Shorter means deeper curve for the same width. Shorter the radius, the more dramatic the curve. we see this in the drawings where, the facade is built, but the drawings of it as well, show it, deepening in curve. The congregation of the propaganda fidi had a long facade with a deep central curve, which was an invitation to stop an enter. The radius of the curve on the plans is set at exactly the width of the narrow street on which it stands. The short of the radius, as I said, the deeper the curve and you can see that here. the radius of the cornus will be shorter still, and therefore the cornus deeper that's a formula for real drama. Facades with this drama seem to sculpt the sky many buildings of the period. one thinks especially of Bernini's palaces, which make beautiful pictures by print makers. none conveys anything like this degree of corporeal engagement with the passing spectator. No curves are more dramatic than those of San Carlo Aqua Quatro font. this is a church that he came back to. He wanted to be buried in this church actually. it didn't happen, but it's his last work, about the facade, A French savant of the next century. The Baron de Montesquieu, a philosopher touring Roman 1728 observed that since the church was small, bo many combined concave and convex to give the eye a longer distance to roam. Sometimes people out of the field come up with just the right observations. The philosopher was on to something important. Try as the architect might the street frontage of the church proper. Could not be expanded. It was blocked by the canted corner on the left, which as you can see, had one of the Quatro Fontani, a big reclining guy, who could never keep company nude, half nude and bearded with the saints on the facade. he tried. At one point he does a sketch saying, maybe I could take in the corner, make the facade water, but it could never be done. And so given that very limited width, the facade instead became an essay in controlled undulation curvaceous, but tightly governed by geometry. Triangles were used on the interior to create a firm armature for these very movement walls. for the facade, the triangles moved out into the street to offer Anchorage for the architect's compass, the tool that lets the spectator believe that he might possess a stone sculpting eye, An architect with as wide a spectrum of commissions as Boarini offers many avenues into the society of Baroque Rome. One goes to these buildings because of their fascinating designs, but once the outer layers of a commission are peeled off, they reveal deeper social and intellectual concerns, and nearly five decades in the city. Boin was involved not only with the famous churches just mentioned, but with eight palaces and six major libraries, although there are no women in his life. Of course, I've been just mentioned this. There are these two, residences or Ana convent for, and the other residents for pious women, they give me, a chance to get into all of these movements, what I call the virginity explosion of Perot Rome, where convents become a dominant force Shaping the landscape. Let's get into that. And if you're doing university, it gets you the chance to study the transformation of university education in these crucial decades. The architect's own house and collection lead us into the wider world of virtual, collecting and natural science, and has worked for a series of ambassadors of the United Iberian Monarchy. his allegiance to the Spanish side of the French Spanish divide allow us to see a fundamental tension in international politics worked out in architecture. basic questions about the artist in society also arise How did an immigrant stone cutter rise and eventually become the knighted architect of one of the most important buildings in Papal Rome? What kind of pressure did the profession impose on the personality? Lastly, a fundamental question always in the back of one's mind. How were these buildings paid for? I have chapters on this sort of thing. Palace culture palaces have been the most intensely studied of all fields of 17th century architecture in the past generation. The primary sources include an array of handbooks for the principal officers of a Cardinal's household, the Maestro Deza and the Maestro Dera. These grave officials, presided over the rituals of visiting, vesting, praying, entertaining, grieving and burying. Many aristocratic households followed a two brother strategy. The capote, the patriarch, married and produced children to pass on the primogenitor while the second brother entered the church to gain access to the lucrative offices reserved for the clergy, the cardinals. the cardinal late implied taking minor orders, but not necessarily ordination, so that in case of tragedy, the clerical brother could retreat. Send back the red hat, the wonderful word, scap lar, send back the hat, marry and continue the line. For instance, the car. This is one of these handbooks showing you how one moved to these buildings. For instance, how one negotiated these long enfilade by giving gentlemen exactly the number of rooms. One even says like the bricks on a tennis floor that a gentleman would require, and then no more. the highly calibrated courtesy of the sort that would make anyone nervous, But this is the ritual of the day. the Capnia family from Orino put their stock in a team of three brothers. The first was a humble but well connected priest. The second, a dashing count who tried to build a palace near Trav. The last a cardinal who did build that palace and remained close to Boro, manini and his young nephew all their lives, wealth and honors came from the church, but the lay brother was expected to produce Proli offspring. The one thing that could give the family immortality. Borrowing an idea from Reubens who in turn borrowed it from a Roman coin. Bo introduced the infant cornucopia into the imagery of the palace. This is proles along with crowns tiaras miters gold coins chains of honor and everything. Proles is the thing that makes all of those others worthwhile boarini, long-term patron. Aio Falconi. the head of a Florentine banking family in Rome was especially conscious of the way architecture could bolster the longevity of his line. He employed Boarini to extend an older renaissance palace on via Julia just behind the Farne. If Cardinal Spaa was another one, oratio Falcon was mad for heraldry. Heraldry come alive, especially in the form of noble Bur is a recurrent theme in Bois's architecture. the previous heraldry of this family was a Falcon's ladder. If you are a falconer, you have a perch in a way. boman, changed it to the bird itself, swooping or standing as a sentinel. The coin enjoined arms of husband and wife were displayed in the apartment where children were to be conceived. this is the fun of figuring out who was where, who lived, where in these apartments get a good plan and you figure out the movements and where the bedrooms are. here we have the conjoined arms of the Falcon family on the left, the ladder and his global wife on the right. this is where New Falcon ti so to speak, were conceived. the extension to the older palace, was to serve as the residents of CIO's brother the Cardinal. and not only the cardinal, but it was meant for future young Abays that every family would hope would grow into Cardinals. When Cardinal Lio died unexpectedly, just as the palace was being finished or Armenian, his most poetic vein. Outfitted the apartment destined for him, not as a place where he could live, but as a CTA to his memory with cryptic ceilings that convey the message of the cardinals on tiring labors for justice. people, it's not a place to live in, but a place to live On so to speak. Aio adhered to the Tuscan practice of using names to remake an ancestor or to look into the telescope from the other end. To have descendants, far in the future remake himself the strange Falcon Herns on the facade, on via Julia Draw, Egyptian inspired symbolism to remind eventual descendants of the founders' remade name. Intergenerational time was a preoccupation of another family of Boings patrons. This is why the palaces get you into such interesting things in society. We'll surely meet the youngest brother Virgilio Spaa. But for now, I wanna, dwell on his cardinal older brother. together, they designed a chapel lined in red marble inlaid by the best Neapolitan marmar, and hung with marble ancestor portraits. You can see them, especially on the right, they look like they're hanging on chords, as though they're portraits in a wall, and so they're hanging on a velvet. This is the way Roman apartments look like

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in a way.

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So it's a kind of camera for the dead, of a very noble sort. But it's also a history book. Some of these ancestors, rose out of the midst of time and eluded hard documentation. In other words, they were fiction, but there was no reason to exclude them. The reason this was rectified history as inclusive as possible since it was serve as the basis for all future histories of the families. You want everyone in. Once again, we're dealing with the patron as architect Borman. He did what he could with a beautiful floral design for the pavement. You can just see it on the bottom, but it was mainly a cameo appearance. If intergenerational time was a theme of the spot. A chapel solar time was a theme of cardinal spot as palace as a devotee of the latest French developments and optics and cat top tricks, which is the science of mirrors and also Anam Phos, the science of, distorted perspective. that was developed by French mathematicians in the convent of the trinita at the top of the Spanish steps in Rome. the cardinal was extremely close to this order. The most learned of these monks was called p Nyon devised an astronomical gallery for the cardinal and also for his own, convent, but especially for the cardinal he see on the right, where a spot of reflected sunlight gives the hour and some astronomical information as well. It was a living hourly demonstration of that paradoxical concept perspective, aria perspective that tells the time Bini entered Bernardino spot a service when most of the work of adapting an older Renaissance palace was done. He found himself serving a cardinal who was a devotee of perspective His first task was to rethink the Cardinal's garden, in particular, the wall where a decade earlier the Cardinal had commissioned a large painting of a colonate in perspective, but just a painting that you would call it a tiva fin, a fictive perspective. Then the cardinal got tired of the prospective of Victor. He told his neighbor, I want your garden. Okay, that happened. And so he punched through the wall, replacing the painting with the colonnade in diminishing perspective. here's a wonderful plan by the Swedish architect, Nicodemus Sine Stockholm, in diminishing perspective. Protruded eight meters into the neighbor's garden He replaced a proa fin with a proa. A real prospective, though more the Cardinal's idea than Bois. It introduces us to a concept that pervades the culture in which Boin patrons moved in Inal artful deception. It was considered a source of delight, even a form of education to solve optical puzzles and resolve anamorphic images. And here's a Shakespeare quote from Richard ii like those perspectives, which when rightly gazed upon show nothing but confusion, but eyed arrived from the side distinguished form to the Shakespeare world just as much as it is here. Bini shared this culture. Thus it would not be surprising. When he comments on the oratory facade made a brilliant thing because he decided to deceive the eye of the passerby. All in the spirit of delighting and educating patron and public alike with an artful falsehood. There's a danger of supposing that baro room was an entirely static society. Some groups within it were on the rise while some were entering into decline. This applies not only to the constant efforts of gentlemen to rise into the nobility and provincials, to Metamorphos and to Tini Romani, but also the religious orders and the congregations that were coming into being. Were attempting to purge themselves through radical reform. They're all on the move. Society is very flexible. There is nothing like architecture to make a corporate body pose the question, who are we or what After the changes of the past generation have we become. An assertion about one's place in society seems to hang on every design decision. The group that provided the young Bini with his most, expensive and expansive early commission, the valley cell, the follows of Philip Neri at Santa Maria Valley Cell were willing to bulldoze a whole neighborhood for their new residents, but remained surprisingly insecure about the image they wanted. followers of a charismatic and humorous saint skillful preachers Church historians, devotees of the cult of early Christianity, sage confessors, precise liturgists, patrons of Avantgarde Altarpieces sponsors of emotionally moving music. They nevertheless tended in their conversations with architects to insist not on what they were, but on what they were not. they were not monks and fanatics of mortification or protegees of a great cardinal or Jesuits professing military governance. They kept insisting. As priests, they were committed to a celebrate life, but they took no vows. They could amass wealth and many did. they were a community that insisted in living together like a Florentine republic in a way. there was a floor of dignity beneath which they didn't want to drop, and a ceiling of ostentation higher than which they did not want to go, but where in between they wanted to be. They did not know. an architect came. an architect called Palolo Marc. Shelli came along. This is a decade before me, Boin, and he found this, the building of course, in the wonderful La Coyle view. he gave them a solution. you can read social history through the quotations that this earlier architect, chose for this. He chose three models. He said, you'll be happy if you can have quotations or allusions to these three buildings. one was the majestic early. Late 16th century Konica of Milan Cathedral by Pellegrino Aldi. the second was a new palace in Rome, not for the Borgese family, but for the UE of the Borgese. They felt, oh, that's just right for us. And the third was going to be a Palladian convent. The convent of the cita in Venice, now the Academia museum in Venice. they felt very happy. These three things were just right for their middle level of society. but in the end, Boman, comes along, changes all of that. he's marvelous because, it's not that he as the architect, if the patron could become the architect could become the patron. he gave the congregation a building that proclaimed not what they had been or what they were, but what they would want to be in future generations. The decades around 1600 saw the transformation of the Que hill. with the appearance of a dozen small churches and convents. The full title of Bois's church that you all know is San Carlos, San Carlino, of course. But let's give it the full title. San Carlos Laima Trinitarians and San Carlos Bo has nothing to do with the Trinitarians, but they liked him, of the Trinitarians Scalzi, the Alt or Unha Trinitarians of the Ransom of Spain. No, they're not Ransom in Spain. they're Trinitarians of Spain. every nation has a branch who are the Trinitarians of Spain, whose business is ransom. ransom is a key word, one that leads us to the social history of the explosion of piracy and the religious orders devoted to bringing Christian captives back from the prisons of Algiers. here in one of the pendens of the church, if you look really closely, they're showing a ransom. It can be dated almost, to 1610, a ransom from Algiers. you see the money on the table. It's amazing how brave these monks were to bring lots of gold. and If they were just killed and the gold taken there'd be no more ransom. So that's the thing that keeps this going. it's extremely dangerous and they can buy back people. If a person is not bought back at the right time, they're shipped to Constantinople, which is the big slave market in, that's the end of them. And Cervantes, who has taken prisoner, off the coast of France after the battle of Le Pento, was there for five years, tried to escape and never did. if you go back to Don Quixote read the part called The Captive's Tale, he tells what it's like to be a prisoner in Algiers until a Trinitarian monk. Comes and rescues him, ransoms him, and lets him get back and write Don and lots of other stuff. So it's a very important part of Spanish cultural life, these redemptions. and that's what this order is all about. in fact, Cervantes is buried in a Trinitarian church, Arian nuns Church in Madrid, Sapienza. and this is the map I've made of all of these religious groups. they have such confusing instructions for their architects. the trinitarians took their simple fare of, bread and water practically in a refactory where they could read under the crucifix. And I discovered this by climbing up and looking down at the original crucifix base. They took their simple fare at a refactory where they could read under the crucifix that he gave me gall to drink from the gospels while their prior returning through the Barberini Gardens from sessions with Cardinal Barberini could speak of his deno to build a church richer than Solomon's Temple. A self-contradictory program tends to baffle architects, but Boarini worked it to his advantage eventually the monks at San Car came to believe that an imaginative design built on a shoestring could express the full range of their evolving corporate character, San Heap. Sanzo is the most interpreted monument of the Barque. I like to liken it to a Christmas tree. You have one interpretation. Put it like an ornament. You have another interpretation. Put it as an ornament. And for all our Christmas trees, the more ornaments the better. So a new interpretation comes. Oh, great. put it up. when you get into the stuff and you're reading the 25th interpretation, you want to say, all of this is the reception of the church. People thinking this up over time. it's a lighthouse, it's a fire But anyway, is there no room for, intention? What did the architect and, his, circle of patrons? really want, and then it gets interpreted and so forth. with a corporate patron, like a university intention can be a slippery concept. I must say, nobody does this. People just add more very personalized and sometimes obscure interpretations. Not really caring whether they contradict anything else, although intention is a slippery concept, especially when a Pope was looking over the institution's shoulder. San Evil presents an unusually complex case since it was built under three popes. A perceptive architect, should be able to divine a range of intentions in his patrons and find imagery to express them. Boin, was astute enough to see how the fretful advocates of the Consistory, the name of the lawyers school really dominated things here. he was able to see, their nervousness about the competition from the Jesuits who are much more efficient and free to award the highest degree, the doctorate or the Laia. He could sense the excitement aroused by efforts, sponsored by the Bari to explore Hadrian's Villa with its many curves, buildings. He called them tempi. He admired the intellectual prowess of two disciples of Galileo who succeeded to the chair of mathematics, just as the design was taking shape and they're part of the public or part of the patron, you might say, the corporate patron. He could sympathize with Alexander VII and ex pope's fussy desire to make the church more regal, more decorative. Also with Alexander's ambition to bring the university into the republic of letters. By adding a great library, one could try to weave all of this into a patterned tapestry of intention. Furthermore, if learned emblems and cabalistic symbols are set aside for a moment, there may be something to be learned by focusing on the way architects think, both in terms of illusion to earlier architecture and in terms of function and movement that is of education as a journey from entrance to goal. And I think not just symbol from books, but where do you move in this building? That was the second, social history. The third difficult task is biography. A life that's interesting with his journey from the Swiss Lakes to the summit of the architectural profession and the papal capital. Deserves a full bibliography as well as an account of the buildings, the biographer runs up against a wall of silence. There are hundreds of documents relating to construction, but little of this is personal. There are no diaries or private letters for mean. He's one publication, the Opus architectonic among later Latin name for his book was written mostly by his patron and appeared 50 years after his death. By contrast, we know far more about John Lorenzo Bernini, the leading artist, of the age. Bernini was a witty conversationalist in his six months in Paris. People, said he's a full bo a he can, he's in. Can just talk your head off, every word was taken down by a very dutiful secretary called Ch Lu, who published, it was published in the 19th century. Bernini was the founder of a house museum. the house is still there, but not in the museum unfortunately. And was the focus of a biography factory organized by his family at his death, and written by one of his sons. Borromini had no biography factory. The guardian of his memory was his nephew and heir Bernardo Castelli, Borromini, A teenager called down from the lake country to keep the aging master company. you have a master in his sixties, and this 18-year-old comes down as a nephew, to learn from the uncle. he turns out to be hopeless and incompetent. he was not the ideal heir either as architect or someone to conserve the memory. Everyone says, what about the rivalry? the shadow that looms over Boro's life is Bernini. part of my chapter on personality is devoted to this relationship. Borini represent resented urban ni de decision to make Bernini architect of St. Peter's just days after Moderno died in 1629, borini thought he should have been over the long run. The position would bring Bernini endless opportunities for financial gain, principally in the Balino and the colon aid of St. Peter's. It would also bring him to the brink of disgrace, these things are still relevant. I try in this chapter to shed light on Bois's personality by comparing the two side by side from many points of view. Family, money, houses, collections, books, honors such as knighthood. Finally, what contemporaries would call complexion, the balance of humors at the core of personality. And this, of course, is the trouble that Bernini runs into with the bell towers of St. Peter's that don't work. and this, illustration by Notre Dame student, I must say very well, well done, of how important those foundations were and how badly they worked under Bernini. this was a cause of great rift between Bernini who did a bad job, and Bini who criticized him very strongly, the fact that Boarini took his own life, demands an attempted explanation, the medical categories that have been applied from his own time. Straw, LTA Luna, lunacy, through the 18th century Paso Patia, to the 19th century schizo thic. That was the fashionable thing. They've never seemed very satisfactory. The direction pointed out by the great scholars Rudolph and his wife, Margaret tko. was to look at the stresses that fickle patronage brought about in a personality dominated by a strong sense of honor. This, I think, has been more promising. Thus, boing he suffered from bouts of, hypochondriac, melancholy, might be a fruitful lead, especially when we look at the cultural dimensions of melancholy. of course, this is the most famous book on melancholy ever written by, Burton in 1621, the Oxford Dean. Still a readable, unbelievably long and unbelievably interesting book on melancholy, not only as disease, but as fashion. And in some ways, Bora men's constant wearing a black, a Spanish fashion can be seen to have something in common, say with Hamlet, as you remember, the lion who's always wearing an inky cloak and customary suit of solemn black. There are three other paths to biography. We don't have letters and they are indirect. the man comes into clearer focus when we look at the people closest to him. Thus his contacts with the clergy and the ability, there were dozens of people, on the building trades. Three, stand Out The Orator Lio Spada, the guidebook, writer Fi Martinelli and the Portuguese Noble, Castel. Rodrigo here are the three. Lio spot is the second most important person in my book, and there's a mini monograph on him in it. he was the son of a provincial tax farmer who loved architecture, was building mad, so to speak. And so he grew up with a dad that had money, and was designing all sorts of buildings around his provincial town. he decided not to join the Jesuits, but entered the Oratory, a congregation that had no objection to his great wealth, and it's an enormous fortune that he has and brings with him. He took an interest in the building program of the orator, from the days of his arrival. He took over really, even though he was in his twenties. Some years later, approaching 40, he became Boarini main advocate, smoothing the shock of in his innovations for a conservative congregation, he was knowledgeable about. He was the knowledgeable amateur whom we find boasting after conversations with Boarini. This is wonderful pay attention to the first word. We were designing this, we were designing. The pinnacle of his influence came under innocent thei when he guided work at the latter in Basilica, the new prisons on the Viju, the Za Piona, and a little town north of Rome, San Martino. the documentary record shows Wiseta was considered the leading administrator of architectural projects at his time. He knew all about contracts, about prices, about materials. He knew the hierarchy of the trades. He knew where patrons were vulnerable to being cheated. He knew something about structure and was not afraid to creep through underground tunnels to check on foundations. You can imagine him an outfit like this creeping under St. Peter's. I imagine he knew the value of the archives where problems came up and buildings of long gestation were in trouble. He kept good records and archived all the drawings. the arrival in 1896 of two huge volumes at the Vatican Library, which are known among specialists as the Spota Papers set off a century of research on Baruch architecture. Although a terrible draftsman himself, Spota could at least show craftsmen what he wanted, and he often picked up the pen. Aside from these major commissions, spota often called bini in for a cameo appearance, and sometimes Bini provoked him with wit. You have to see them as a scared soul, like the bini idea for the new prison that Spota is in charge of building. Where he fashions it as a kind of mouth of, not hell. It's like a baroque villa where he says, abandon all, worry all you who entered here the prison got a much more fitting door, but I think we have to interpret these things not as project, but as skirt. So as wit between two people who understood each other. Above all, Spota knew about money. He recognized the essential role of debt in all Roman building, and he knew how to both control debt and to get rid of it. he could give aristocratic advice to aristocratic families on how to manage their debt. It's an extremely interesting, somewhat long part of the book. Aside from Money Spotter had a personal aesthetics. He was drawn irresistibly to innovation. It was not so much an ideal of beauty that he was chasing, but rather a quality he called the single ra. The striking, the singular, the distinctive. He could make a work worthy if he could make it stand out. He was fond of Mosaic and we know where he lived circled in red at the Tor Dejo of the Filip Piano Noble Apartment. Not a big apartment, but he has his art collection and so forth in there. but he was fond of Mosaic. Abbott Suze, the famous Abbott of Ani loved the glistening marble and light in the marble. he appreciated the mystery of frozen veins and precious marbles like his brother, Cardinal Spata. He was well-informed about the latest developments in optics. He was knowledgeable about G Galilean astronomy and he was a magnet for those who wanted innocent attempts. Reverse the inquisitions verdict on the Fcan Scientist. He had a respectable collection of 40 scientific instruments including concave and convex mirrors armory sphere. Solar watches and AstroLabs quadrants, celestial spheres, lenses, a microscope, a telescope. He had success. He had access from the tower. over his rooms under the bell when Rome didn't have any light pollution, where he could carry out, observations with his telescope. he had a respectable art collection and one I like best is now in Palazzo Spata. It's this amazing painting called The Philosophers. We really should rename it. it has been renamed by the museum as the astronomers, where the painter Nicolo Oli shows all the schools of astronomy with studied ambiguity. Ptolemy with the feathers on your left polo me the bearded figure with the rough as Tko Brahe, Copernicus in the middle with the fur coat you would need if you were up in Poland, staying up all night to look at the universe on the very far right, mysterious, not really getting, mixing much with the crowd. Looking a little dangerous is Galileo, all of these schools are together without him committing himself to any one of them. the second person in Bo In's life is called Fear of Onte. Martinelli. He's known to church historians, but obviously not to the general culture. He made his reputation in church history, but he achieved fame and some money by writing popular guidebooks. And one of them, is called Roma Retta. It went through many editions. It's a tiny little thing smaller than paperback, especially in the third edition of 1658, we find him dwelling at great lengths, changing the text a lot to dwell on boian, how good he is, and what the theory behind his architecture is. in it, he included three tiny prints that unfold. when unfolded from the guidebook, maybe four inches by three inches. the guidebook is smaller. Their drawings supplied by Boin and all the things that are wrong with the buildings and the drawings of bini projecting what's wrong? that's the way he wanted you to see the building. The relationship between the two men was vibrant on both the intellectual and the personal level. it's Martinelli's texts are where we find Bini never wrote anything down where he found out what he thought about his architecture, what he thought about innovation, his unexpected death in 1667, we don't know how, through Borini into a tailspin was followed by a tumultuous week in which the architect withdrew his original will from the notary, replaced it with another, and then took his own life. It seems he simply did not want to go on without his devoted advocate. A TED-like friendship brought them close. the degree of closeness remains a subject for further scrutiny. The third, pastor Rodrigo, is an important personality in Boro's life. But he's very elusive. They only overlap in Rome for six years, 1634 to 40. He's from an incredibly famous and old Portuguese family. It was his father Christopher, the first Marcus of Castor Rigo, who was the engineer of the unified crown of Portugal and Spain, which lasted from 15, the eighties, more or less, to the Revolt of Portugal in 1640. But Iberia was one country to the point when there was some thought that the capital should move from Madrid to Lisbon'cause it was much more central to the empire and so on. But this is an amazing period, and his family is right in the middle of that, the family. There's his, he, comes from a, I'm sure he never went to this, castle on the Portuguese Spanish border, you see the. Harbor of Lisbon in an 18th century painting with his palace on the left, which is bigger than the royal palace on the right, both destroyed, in the earthquake of 1755. This is a very important person. had the revolt of Portugal in 1640. Not thrown the political situation into turmoil. He would've paid for a noble, in fact, completely marble facade for San Carino. He said, doesn't matter what it costs, spend everything, But then in 1640, he had to leave just when the facade might have been done. he's gone from Rome for seven years. He has a diplomatic career in Madrid. Eventually returns to, Vienna has to return to Madrid. He can't go to Portugal. Portugal is rebelled. He's a loyalist to Spain. He loses the palace, loses everything, of his eight children, seven die he says, of this embassy to Rome, I lost all my fortune and seven of my children. So it's. Difficult time for him. Nonetheless, he remains a person of great prestige. There's an element of affection between him and Boarini. The phrase that Boarini uses is, I'm more your son than your servant. in his household. He learns the codes of Spanish dress, which everyone notices. He doesn't dress like a Roman or like a Frenchman, but like a Spaniard. there's this element of affection, between a man who, in spite of enduring marriage and a large family, could be accused of a secret tribunal before King Philip himself in Madrid, of a crime that everybody knew he was guilty of, namely homosexuality. It leaves the door open and Aja to more hidden sides of the architect's personality perhaps. There's the library he commissioned. There is Rigo, and he commissioned, he paid for the San Carlino library. He's a biblio file of the highest class, and of course, he loses his library with the revolt of Portugal. it's very important to remember Portugal and not just Spain and house contents and culture. for Forman, he lived his entire life in Rome at the same address on small street that called the Lane of the Lamb. St. John has a lamb and so on, and so the lane of the lamb, in the Florentine quarter, unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not build a house as an architectural statement. The inventory drawn up after his death reveals rooms full of interesting possessions. It's been known to scholarship for many years. and it endlessly, it's endlessly revealing. it doesn't tell us everything. the notaries were not that careful. It doesn't name the author of many of his 141 paintings, a large collection. some were curious. they say he had a portrait of Cardinal Spaa in a frame decorated with Seashells saying, what in the world could that have looked like? There were many devotional paintings as though he were a Pius person. There was a Saint Francis. He's Francesco. Okay. but then there were a lot of things like triumph of death with books, a putto sleeping with death and Time. And they may simply reflect a taste for a genre made popular by salvato rosa, or they may reflect a deeper strain of melancholy, curiosity. It is the conviction of my book that for all of their importance, the twin fonts that people always name for, Boarini, Michelangelo, and the antique are, and as you explore both in chapters are not enough to explain Boorman's exuberant creativity, the House provides a clue that literary sources don't. namely the collection that he built up, which included shells, which seem appropriate for an architect who put a spiral on top of saying evil. this collection, which we call a curiosity collection, found this wonderful view, in, one of these new museums springing up in Italy, of the quarter that was annihilated in the 19th century, and then again in the 1930s just to the right of Sangiovanni, right of port, right of the bridge,

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near

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opposite the castle. so not there anymore, but that was where his house was. and then of course we have the maps of Rome that show it. And I've circled more or less the area where the lane of the lamb was. We don't know the address, but this kind of colles was not, one of the great collections of Rome, like Kiker, the most famous of them, or many of the smaller cabinets. Now people are discovering left and right. however, it does enrich the intellectual profile of the architect. The habit of collecting allowed boarini common topics of conversation with patrons who collected lenses and mirrors or cultivated exotic gardens. Curiosity merits a long chapter because it allows us to listen to an otherwise silent mind on topics like the geometry of nature, the beauty of flowing light, or the alphabet of flowers. A wonderful phrase I take from the sermons of John Dunn, the inheritance. A house is a cabinet of curiosities all in one. you see seashells works turned on the lays prints compasses instruments insects and all sorts of realms of knowledge wrapped up here. I have a lot on this kind of thing, which I think somehow reflects, not literally, but the mentality of the architect, the inheritance. a house is a fragile vessel for the archives of life, seldom seaworthy for more than a generation. His nephew, stayed in the house, for a while, but with each move and inheritance, first the curiosity collection vanished and the antiques vanished. Then the models vanished, and finally only the drawings were left. The nephew guarded them ferociously because he wanted to be an architect and could base his career on saying, I have the great Boarini drawings you want to finish your Boarini church, I can do it for you because I have the drawings. Or he based his career on them. So he held them very tight. Bini himself had wanted a publication, of his work, a sort of opera Omnia, but it never came about. nonetheless, the collection after the nephew's deaths went on the market, it eventually came into the possession of a strange German nobleman called Philip fta. Is a mixture of many things. Nobleman, Prussian, spy for the British, working for British agents, but living in Rome. antiquarian, connoisseur, especially not only sculpture, but ancient gems, collector statues and things, especially collector of gems, by which I don't mean just jewels, but engraved like theistic artists who will engrave a figure that sort of thing. Fantastic collection of them, which attracted the interest of the great Antiquary Kelman. Kelman wanted to meet the old Star and Leon Kelman, but Kelman got to Florence too late. Sta had moved to Florence in that palace, this fantastic ATI palace, where the Bomming drawings were, preserved with all this other stuff. Winkelman stayed in the palace anyway. He spent six months there cataloging the gems and published a book on Stasha's gems, which is extremely interesting. then everything was auctioned by the heirs and the gems went to Berlin and the drawings went to Vienna. And that's why we have the Albertino drawings. So this is what happened to the Nala. but what happened to the reputation? star's letters and gelman's letters when he's living in the house are quite interesting because he talks about the wonderful things he's finding. He says There's drawings by Michelangelo here. drawings by Raphael. it's so interesting to read the collection of pornographic literature, and he named some titles He had the best collection of pornographic literature in Florence. anyone surveying Lake Baroque architecture in Italy, Iberia, or the Germanic lands will see, the inescapable, namely that poor Meani seems to be ubiquitous. Window frames with their curves, walls, underlaying in concave patterns, cornices that curve and shape urban space. Doors that embrace the visitor. rare was the urban landscape of the period that did not include curved facades or rare, still the grande church without twin towers like Piazza Navona, the masonry that Bora Manini Pierce led to a progeny of skeletal wall system and vaults that open up to reveal hidden glows deemed dignified enough for the royal palace and Stockholm in the highest class. we have the wonderful architect Philippo Ra, talking about the Bora Bini. He loved saying Yes. Now, Bois's ornament is all the fashion with the people which he gives as a capital P, so it's become the fashion of the middle class, so to speak, in the early 18th century. However, if you're gonna see traces of Bini everywhere, it's hard to write a chapter on his real influence. I've as a mental discipline, I said I only want strong Bora ismo. Not every curve.'cause there are, every building in the 18th century is curved. Okay. But strong Bora ismo, at a certain point, the father of a movement dissolves into a vaguely discerned ancestor. these strong works are places where an architect cast himself in a direct line of dissent with the master through obvious citation, but then manipulates the borrowed forms in a creative, personal way. The spectator's response comes in phases, recognition, pleasure at the recall of an admired source, and then marvel at the transformation. That's a nice sequence that the cultivated specter is expected to have. there were architects who professed admiration for boarini like uva, and I must say with our class, as some of we spend a lot of time with UVA and Turin, and I think it's a real revelation for everyone. Wonderful. Architect of, we're in the 1720s now in 1730s. And he saw the potential, for instance, of the raw brick in, Bois, Plan a raw brick church, San Andrea Defra Boarini unfinished, drawing by UVA for, commo Cathedral, rejected at Cuomo, drawing accepted in Mantua. And You can see the sequence here. It's very nice in a way. And this is by a real admirer. a professed admirer. there's another admirer, and this is one I've had the most fun with. But this, this is yra by the way. a Campanile Yra where you see he's looking at bini or the way he lets light in through the apertures here now. the young French draftsman of Dutch extraction called gilmar up Ord, let's mispronounce an up ord ano. Studied in Roman, the 1690s. Very intense late. He never stops. Stop sketching. He would do very well At Notre Dame, he was nosy and he pushed open every door. Six thick sketchbooks survive with hundreds of pages of baroque detail. The Meison Parish is special. There's no wasted space. True architect, he drew half a door or a window, and that was enough. He loved to climb and he had X-ray vision, as you can see with the drawing of San Evil over there. He came back to Bini again and again. The sketchbooks are like a photo campaign, of the buildings, just as they're finished, before inevitable change set in. For instance, this page, shows on the lower left, part of the facade of San Carino, and on the right it shows the statue of St. Charles on the facade of San Carlino. so puzzling what's on top. Oh, let's turn the page a little bit. Don't waste that space. Remember, you have x-ray vision. You can see through everything. And let's, look at it closer. Of course, it's a half drawing because that's what architects do. You can deduce the rest, In fact, while we're at it, why don't you stare at it and let us put it into contact with an early 20th century photograph. as you're looking really closely, I think you're probably noticing that there's a bridge going to the top of the church from the left only preserved by aort and a bridge going to the right, only preserved by Alinari. these were destroyed, but they were originally built by boarini so that you could get to the top of the cupola and climb the spiral. So this piece of knowledge changes our perception completely of the way these buildings were used, the way education was symbolized by movement. fantastic. You can see what, and these drawings, I just got the photographs from the Cooper you were drawing. I've had black and white photographs for years, but to get the color drawings was just such fun. I, also came across architects, who, disproved a Bo Manian Fisher fun airlock great show on Fisher. Just last couple of months in Vienna, was a student and Roman loved Bernini and he knew that Bernini was the way of the future When he went back to Vienna, he's all gonna be all Boarini, but out of the corner of his eye, he explored the hidden reaches of Boarini. This door in the Kde Filip on the left. No one ever goes to see it. It was not published in any of the books you've gotta penetrate to the most difficult parts of the house to find it. And yet Fisher found it and used it 12 times. Very grandly in the Imperial Library at Vienna. as I say, he looked at Borromini out of the corner of his eye, knowing he wasn't supposed to. So that's another kind of bmo, the greatest student, of course, is GU War. Who arrived in Rome as a teenager, and there were three very important sojourns in Rome where he could see the buildings going up. So it's not through books or anything, it's going up. so for example, in the Church of San Angelo, Al my student Susan Kleber a wonderful work on this church, which doesn't exist anymore. It's not finished and then destroyed in the revolutionary period. But you can see, I think that he's borrowing for the bottom of the drum, the courtyard of San Carlino. for the top of the drum. He's doing something like the propaganda fe, this is the young or any thinking boreman thoughts, but never mentioning Bo me conceals his tracks. if you gotta do a city gate, what's better as a source or maybe that window in the middle of the propaganda feed that he saw during his last visit. We can date it exactly to May of 1662 when he's there. this is fun. Of course he doesn't mention it. And then, the unbelievable, synthesis of so many things, French. Germanic and other things come in, but of course there's much of boin in there. And I thought I would just leave you with this interesting, challenge to put all of this into the Syne. I came across some wonderfully curious things as well. the Tower of the Christ Church or the Savior Church in Copenhagen, which was added in 1749 by an architect to an older tower already built. The design was changed when the king said, I want a singular design, not ordinary or common. This, opened the door, to bini. All Copenhagen can be surveyed from this slender furl, a neoclassical refinement of the speaking baroque of evil in Krakow,

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Poland.

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the architect Casper b trained in Rome. The Church of the congregation of St. Vincent de Paul as a synthesis of Bernini and Bini on the outside of channels. San Andrea on the inside, the propaganda fide. The two rivals have seldom been more happily. We scholars wrestle over whether the great architect of Moraia and Bohemia, Santini, his famous church of St. John Nemo, for instance, the people are trying to say, as a boy of 19, did he get to Rome, but there's no proof. books are coming into Prague all the time, but they actually get to Rome and Czech scholars divided. I was reading, I don't recheck of course, but reading people, interpreting a wonderful Czech scholar called Mima, Homa rather, MOJ Homa, who spent most of his life on this problem. his conclusion is that it's not so much forms coming out of Saint Evil. The churches don't look that much alike, but the idea that you could synthesize geometry, relics, devotion, mysticism of some sort. Into a single design plan and elevation. the sort of experience you could only get in Saint Evil in person. He says that's why the person,

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and

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he sums it up.

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he

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he likes the idea that Santini really did go to Rome. And he says, it seems that knowledge of architecture gave the young Santini, the key to understanding himself. It's a very nice way of talking about, Boin, ismo, hawks more again, I see the timing hawks more. of course never traveled. He's one English architect who never got to the continent, but he had book galore and it Oxford and Alsos College. He had wanted to design a buttery butter is a room with the fellows buy their beer. A little room. and, he designed it as a rectangle, as you probably should. But then Boorman's book on the oratory of the Philipp came into his hands and he saw that the dining room there was not only curved, but had curved benches and curved tables that followed the plan of the oval. And although it's very small, he did the same in this little room. And then he saw that other bini at San Carlo and other books had this amazing kind of, Crawford vaulting. And as I say, it's in this little room, which is off the beaten track. You never get in there really this Littleford Zeppelin that we find the best trace of Boreman ismo in England. Ebner a long time ago, said, in the side of Saint Mary Woolworth in London, we get something, Boian. The key thing is the niche into which an architrave has been pressed comes right out of the propaganda And yes, yet he's right. But there one finds, the fact that. The propaganda fide is full of windows and light, and there's no windows at all, even the cell there. in this church, it's a monument of blindness. When a fellow Venetian Clement XII became Pope Piranesi, who wanted to be an architect, but never really could, finally thought he'd have the chance to do the choir of the latter end, the Bini Nave is on the right, the counter Reformational. Transept is in the middle, and the new choir of Piranesi is on the left. There are 20 drawings in New York with five different projects in which he takes up all of the Bini themes and does them better in a way. it's a fantastic, thing, but of course there was no chance it would ever

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be

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built. instead what he did build more or less at the same time, not for the Pope, but for his nephew, was the Church of the Knights of Malta on the Entine Hill, very much intact and in beautiful condition Although we think of Piranesi as the duta of the Roman ruin, the poet of the Etruscan sewer, the man of the megaliths. when he designs a church, he designs a propaganda fide. He designs a bini church complete with all of this kind of, heraldic, ornament and, ribs and the celebrant. And this was wonderful to be able to take this picture in the morning'cause it's only visible in the direct low horizontal morning sunlight. The celebrant over the altar sees through to a fantastic vision of the Holy Spirit, the cult of Palladio spreading in northern Italy and England. After 1700 fed into an anti borromini current until the later 18th century, his reputation dipped to its lowest point. In fact, the image of Bini in modern books was shaped by this polemic. I started with the one on the left. The one that everybody sees in books is the one on the right. now what is this thing On the right, you have the architect's portrait, taken from the painted portrait. Not very well, but you have this incredible cloak, like a gentleman flowing out of the frame, the architect's tools encompasses and everything. On the left, the stone frame, the books, the Learned Architect. where did this come from? This is 1720. You have a copy here in the rear book room. It's wonderful. 1716. This book came out from Palladio, in England, of course Leonis Palladio. it's obvious where the Bini portrait comes from. It's part of this ongoing polemic with Palladio and the polemic with Palladio develops. The famous Milia by the 1760s is saying things like this Little Vicenza was just Palladio, but comparably, grander than Rome. With her obviously disdain San Gallos, Bonna, rotis, Peruzzi, Olas, all of whom are not, worse is Fontana, Moderno, Bernini, Bini, and a swarm of others who like tartars trampled the beautiful Roman architectural heritage. the recovery of, and this is the front piece of his book where if you look to the left, he says, love this one. Hawk Emmett, namely Colonnades, and the primitive hut, the other side spur this one hawk spur. an oratory facade. It was disgusting. this is the book that Jefferson studied for architecture, the recovery of Bini. started with renewed appreciation of Northern and Viennese, especially, and Piedmontese Baroque. That was gradually extended to the sources of those styles. The early 20th century saw a new interest in the late phases of classical styles in general. Late Roman art and architecture, late Renaissance and baroque Vienna with the largest collection of boarini drawings became the center of new research in post Second World War Italy. Boarini was studied with enthusiasm by designers eager to shake off the constraints of early modernism and scholars venturing into the enchanted wood of iconography. the complimentary embrace of scholar and architect is suggested in the work of Paolo Portugese, who died exactly one year ago, whose publications with their dramatic photographs range from 1955 to 2019. One goes to Anthony Blunt and his short book of 1979. This distinguished scholar of French Classicism, of Posan of Naples, and of the Sicilian Baroque. When I was starting out as a grad student, I read his book in Proof, the manuscript before publication. it's the thing one now reads. I hope after many years of research that I've gone deeper, but I wonder what my life might have been like if at that time I had grasped the full meaning of the warning. And blunt's preface, when Bini bites you, he never, lets go.

1:06:56

In the, collection you mentioned the cabin of curiosities. was there any evidence of him owning or, having studied specific treatises that, predated? We don't have

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any titles of his 980 books, we have an indication though, there was an architect, scientist or engineer, called Guess Barry, who Bo many knew who was also a Biblio file. as a man who came up through the trades and became a Galilean scientist of some fame, he was the first person to explore the scientific question of the vacuum. Impossibility of the vacuum, yet he could prove there was a vacuum under certain conditions. a very important Galilean scientist who was professor at San Yvo briefly, but died young after he died, his very big book collection went somewhere. And we know that Bora Menini got some titles of it. And recently a young Roman friend was whom I worked wonderful Discovery, discovered the inventory of his book collection. It is about 900 books. It's bigger than Galileo's Library and it has everything you can imagine of that kind of library. And it gives us an idea. And it's wonderful. Inventory is a wonderful, because you have an A one notary up on the ladder, some kid and his father down here writing in a big book and the kid says, KLE, harm versa. this is Kepler's greatest book on universal harmony and so forth. You get a very garbled kind of inventory. But we do have the titles for that one. We don't have them for both meaning,

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so we have to do a lot of. speculation.

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can you talk a little bit about,

1:08:26

warming and Bernini? did they learn from each other? Sure. What did they learn from each other?

3 1:08:30

Bernini learned how to use the pencil. there's a wonderful portrait of Chippie Borgese in the Morgan, which everyone says, oh, it's red chalk and black chalk. no, it's pencil because he's working with Bini. And he takes that very pedestrian, very sort of craftsman, like to, oh, there's potential with the pencil. bini looking at Bernini's, fancy grotesques, his medusa's heads and so forth says, I could do that too. And in his ornament for Palazzo Barberini, where they're working together, he does things that people say, oh, that's be, no, it's Pini so there's a lot of cross learning. I feel that people talk about who did the Balino? I think it's obviously a sculptor's thing and 10 years of incredible work, bronze casting and so forth. so it's Bernini's thing with all sorts of help, but Borini was the architect working with him. My feeling is if Bini hadn't been there, we'd be seeing four columns on the floor today. he's the one that really said to hold it together on all those conditions. It has to be like this, which is not the same as designing it,

5 1:09:31

anyway,

3 1:09:31

as my students will know, I loved, to say Bernini makes you happy, but Bini makes you think. And, I don't think any of Bernini's happiness gets over into Bini, but not that much of Bo's thoughtfulness gets into Bernini. That's a shallow comment perhaps.

4 1:09:48

Yes.

1:09:48

Thank you, Joe, for such a beautiful talk. I was listening thinking about the element of time and how it impacts. you talked about this book project your relationship with the material, in our audience, there are many students who are just embarking on this course of study and the relationship with Rome. as someone who spent a long time of your life dedicating your work, this, how, Slow looking over time, over the course of a longer period, may have changed your thinking and, how that experience has unfolded in this book project.

3 1:10:28

Yeah. I've changed a lot. on the other hand, I come across things I wrote a long time ago and said pretty good. the editor will have to break through the door and take this book from me because I keep changing it. but such as the nature of all books, big stages in the evolution, when I worked, first I didn't really have a doctor Foer, I did technically, but was not interested in period. but I found a very wonderful old man, who was a noble from the Kii family. His name was Inchi Tta. it was a lateral branch. very devout, a follower, always dressed in a three piece suit and extremely formal. The Italians will say not to but Lei, he never said Le, it was always Ella, what is lasa? Think of this. so very formal and old fashioned. But being a Le orator, he was very interested in the archives of Philip Neri. when I went to the archives not knowing quite what I wanted, having a vague idea, he tested me all the time. He said, how can you prove it? How can you prove it? How can you prove it? And this being tested was very valuable for me. It was not part of my graduate education. How can you prove that it's not part of anybody's graduate education in general, it was very good discipline. eventually I could prove those things. I was looking at the documents, and, he made me do it. that was an early stage. I still love solving problems, like that over drawings and documents. But these bigger issues of the not, getting into. The culture of curiosity is amazing and wonderful literature on all of that by historians of science especially. And that led me see into this silent man like nothing else did. You only had to have a small curiosity collection in his house to know that he was interested in it and therefore he's not a protagonist, but it's a clue into his mind. but then towards the end I began to go back to good old fashioned architectural history. And this is just in the past year or so saying, let's look at the no labban and it's so much fun. what about Fisher? Fisher really disapproves, but he snuck in that visit. and Tini, it's mystic it, so Nia discovers himself, but it was fun to think through those. And the literature on all of them is extensive German, Czech, these are hard things to get through, but you get people who write an Italian tool and so one can get at some other sources. that way. I've changed a lot. And those are the big,

4 1:12:44

phases

9 1:12:45

thank you for a wonderful lecture. I really enjoyed listening to one part that you just briefly alluded, and I would like to hear more about it. Yeah. And that is related to Palladio and, Bini and how the transition over across the ocean coming to United States, you talked about the, book Jefferson was referring to could you elaborate a little bit more because that influenced United States quite a bit.

3 1:13:09

Yeah. you might say Palladio goes to North America and Bernini goes South America, Boen. He goes to South America just oversimplification. But, I don't know if there are any buildings in America in the, I don't know. but that whole business, Boin uses palate all the time. He owns a palate for sure. he quotes from the best palate palace, in my opinion, the Palazzo Valana in Vicenza. And I dunno if he ever got to Vicenza, but he has a woodcut of it. And he draws the woodcut and makes it the propaganda graffiti. And it says, no, we want to change it. So he's quoting and meant to be recognized as a quotation. So in his day, Palladio is the gospel. But he becomes a perception that Palladio is true antique spirit, and bini is the opposite. And all of Palate's fantasy, is forgotten. And all of Bois's adherence to the antique models is forgotten. and they become diametrically opposed. Thanks to people like Macio who puts them in. I didn't realize until I did that. There's another chapter on the decline. How just this use of pal. Trash Borini is a theme that grows and grows in the 18th century. Begins with the portraits, but it grows.

4 1:14:20

Nice.

10 1:14:21

hello Professor. It's great to see you again. Hi.

11 1:14:24

Hi.

10 1:14:24

this was, discussed in the lecture and also brought up in one of the previous answers, but Borini seemed to have a strong understanding of structure. He never designed a bell tower that fell over, for example. So I was curious, did Borini ever study craftsmanship

3 1:14:39

You don't go to school, you come out of families that work in quarries and with stone. the whole world of the lakes is a world of stone. Everybody is a stone cutter or the thing that's derivative of that is stuccos.'cause it's made from marble. Everyone is in the world of stone cutting, but there's no work there. So they all have to leave and most go to places like Warsaw, Vienna. Ireland even. there is a train that goes to Milan, and a smaller train, that goes to Rome. some of the famous Romans are all from the lakes, and their training is in masonry stone. structure building. The wonderful Italian word for building is to wall. these Italian buildings are big walls, basically. Bernini, is a humanist sculptor and artist, and he has no clue, about structure, but he's a fast learner Bernini is amazing at using everybody.

4 1:15:30

Joe,

12 1:15:30

I'm sure we all look forward to, reading the book when it comes out. thanks for a wonderful, journey. you were describing, aspects of, Ator, the Philippine, you mentioned that the curvature of the central portion of the facade was, related to the depth of the space. So I was wondering, how can you prove that? Because that's a fact. Yes.

4 1:15:52

So I was warned

3 1:15:53

the piazza gets smaller and the final drawing is 150 pound me. So the deeper the radius, the more the drama. That's one of the rules. these protruding cornices are also very interesting. They're very dramatic cornices. Because they protrude out, their radius will be smaller and they'll be more dramatic still.

12 1:16:10

I was wondering, is there any record or any, evidence of how you arrived at this, theatrical formulas? Has it, anything to do with, the way, stage, sets were designed

3 1:16:20

Obviously that world is the world of UVA in the 18th century, the whole stage design where it's intimately related. But of course this world, the thing that comes closest is not stage, but ephemera in the piazzas, the fireworks displays and all of that. And yes, they're all interested in these fireworks and these stucco and canvas and things. one of my discoveries, I think significant is in the, fountain Piazza Nvo, the Four Rivers Fountain of Bernini. What's its main source no one has pinned down the main source. Everyone has a lot of ideas. What's the main source? Ruben's book of festivities in Antwerp of a decade before, which is ephemera. and there are arches and Ruben's processions that are really the models for Bernini. so Bernini is very much in this world of,

4 1:17:08

ephemera, Thank you. Okay.

1 1:17:10

how does the use of drawing, where did soft drawing at the time, reflect the observation that a architectures made more precise by this medium? And how does it affect building the relationship of the architect construction?

3 1:17:27

I'll answer another question and maybe it'll answer part of yours, one of the phenomena of the Bora I showed a color drawing and then a pencil drawing, that was a relatively simple pencil drawing, but if we could look at it a lot, we'd see layers, all sorts of interesting layers underneath weren't too visible in the slide. because, the pencil gives you exactness, but it also lets you keep on working. nothing is ever quite finished in the later part of his life. because he keeps revising and revising. But the ZA is always there somewhere on the first layer or something. So how does this affect construction? it's the master masons who are the geniuses and who know how to build. Even though the, the, it's famous that, the contractors in Chicago in. 1890s would get a set of blueprints and they would say, one of those damn right buildings, and refuse them because they were hard to build. the contractors for Bini were probably tempted to say one of those damn boen. the contractors come back and say, we were not paid enough because those vaults were of extraordinary fata rebuilt and we had to buy five pounds of wax to make a model of that vault for the last rebuilding. So they're unhappy, they're not paid enough.'cause of the constant pressure of the architect who says not good enough. We have several instances of that, architect as tyrant, so to speak.

4 1:18:46

Thank you.