I. Borromini and the Ticinese and Lombard Communities within the Professional Architecture System in Rome, from Pope Sixtus V to Pope Urban VIII

Abstract

I.1 Ticinese Architects and Builders within the Organizational System of Public Building

This chapter treats the changing dynamics of the presence of Ticinese architects and builders in Rome before and after the arrival of Francesco Borromini in 1619, within the overall organizational structure of public building, long dominated by Borromini’s countrymen Domenico Fontana and Carlo Maderno.

The strategic importance of the evolution of the immigrants’ presence will be examined on the basis of the organizational charts of the various roles of what constituted a public and papal architect, and the distribution of public works contracts to master builders, in particular for the “Tribunale delle strade”.

In this context, Borromini’s move from Milan to Rome is analysed within the ambit of the larger phenomena of the emigration of the Ticinese building trade to Rome, as well as within the Roman cooperative and academic system of architecture.

I.2 Settlement Dynamics and Building Activity of the Lombard and Ticinese Communities

The presence in Rome of Lombard and Ticinese architects and master builders in the first two decades of the seventeenth century coincides with a real monopoly in the building trade. This chapter delineates the reflections of this monopoly on the strategies of these professionals’ residency within the urban territory of Rome, by way of a systematic analysis of the parrochial censuses of the period, ranging from the end of the sixteenth century through until 1620, a study never before undertaken.

This new research evidences that the immigrant builders, and those immigrant architects who previously had been builders, moved residency within Rome to coincide with the areas of new urbanization of the city where they were active as professionals.

While on the other hand, for those immigrants who had begun to train as architects already in their homelands, they could expect to arrive in Rome and settle directly with a qualified countryman architect. This is the case for Carlo Maderno, who at first resided with his uncles, Giovanni and Domenico Fontana, in their house in the Vatican Borgo – an area known as the «Island of the Cavalier Fontana». From 1601, Maderno moved nearby, to the other side of the Tiber River, to a house in what is known today as the Via del Consolato, close to the house where the young Francesco Borromini resided when he first arrived in Rome.