III. The Architect Borromini and the Others

Abstract

III.1 From Maderno to Bernini: Drawings for Palazzo Barberini alle Quattro Fontane

This chapter foregrounds the role of the young Borromini in the history of the planning and realization of the palace «alle Quattro Fontane» of the Barberini papal family, beginning with his contributions to the initial project under the auspices of the architect Carlo Maderno, and subsequently, after Maderno’s death on 31 January 1631, his continuing work on the palace design under the direction of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Specifically, Borromini submitted his first drawings for the palace as the principal collaborator of Maderno; latterly he was engaged in Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s first phases of planning and construction at the palace, up until 1632-33, after which time the relationship between the two architects deteriorated irreparably.

Borromini’s on-going engagement with the project for Palazzo Barberini is congruous with what we know the architect expressed with conviction to Monsignor Virgilio Spada – that the projection of the Barberini palace was entirely his own design. 

Borromini’s claim to the design of the Barberini palace, as recounted by Virgilio Spada, and also as reported by the architect’s biographer Giovanni Battista Passeri (ante 1679), and by Borromini’s own nephew Bernardo Castelli (in 1685) will be compared with an analysis of various drawings for the principal facade (west-facing), the rear facade (east-facing), and the main doorway into the “Salone”, interpreted here as key design elements in order to define Borromini’s creative input before he began his career as an independent architect.

III.2 From Peparelli to Rainaldi: Architectural Designs for Monsignor Alfonso Gonzaga

An archive document of 1644 links the name of Francesco Borromini to the completion of a modest building modification to be undertaken at a palace in Montecitorio, belonging at that time to a certain “monsignor Gonzaga”, today identifiable as the Emilian archbishop Alfonso Carlo Gonzaga.

This palace can now be identified as that sited next to the “Curia Innocenziana”. Construction of the building was begun in 1617 for Cardinal Domenico Toschi, passed subsequently to the Guidi di Bagno family in 1622, then to the Fathers of the Mission of the Trinity in 1659, and is presently home to the Chamber of Deputies. This essay outlines the few known building phases of the palace during the seventeenth century, and clarifies the role of Borromini in the project. In the course of this research, the name of Francesco Peparelli came to light as the architect employed by Cardinal Toschi for the first nucleus of the palace structure, realized between 1618 and 1621. Additionally, Carlo Rainaldi emerges as the probable designer of two projects to enlarge the palace for the Fathers of the Mission of the Trinity; one project which was undertaken from 1664-1666, and a second one dating from 1676, which was never realized.

Three Borromini drawings for a private chapel, today in the collections of the Kunstbibliothek Berlin, can now be related to Alfonso Carlo Gonzaga and his residency at the Montecitorio palace. The analysis of these drawings permits for a reconstruction of the principal elements of a project – previously unknown – which anticipates several of the design solutions that Borromini later proposed and adopted on a much larger scale for the tribune of the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome.