Bernini and Borromini: the rivals of Baroque Rome

The difference between Bernini and Borromini is the difference between Baroque theatre and Baroque geometry. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was a sculptor and a director, and built with light, coloured marble and stories in stone. Francesco Borromini (1599–1667) began as a stonemason and created spaces from combined geometric figures, almost always in white plaster. Their two small churches on the Quirinal in Rome, Sant'Andrea and San Carlo, lie only a couple of hundred metres apart and are the best way to see the difference.

Facts

Two lives in the same city

Bernini was a prodigy. He grew up in Rome as the son of a sculptor and was already in his twenties the city's most sought-after sculptor, with popes and cardinals as patrons. Borromini came to Rome as a young stonemason and worked for a long time under his relative Carlo Maderno, the architect of the nave and façade of St Peter's. He knew building from the ground up, in the literal sense.

In the 1620s they worked together. When Maderno died in 1629, Bernini became architect of St Peter's, and Borromini drew details for the great bronze baldacchino over the high altar under him and worked on the Palazzo Barberini. It was Bernini who received the credit. Borromini, who was both the more skilled builder and the more difficult person, felt overlooked, and the rivalry between them lasted for the rest of their lives. Bernini received the largest commissions under the popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII, Borromini his best under Innocent X.

Bernini: architecture as theatre

Bernini thought like a stage designer. In St Peter's Square, built in 1656–1667, two semicircular colonnades, four columns deep, reach out from the church. Bernini himself described them as the arms of the Church welcoming the faithful. The square is made for a crowd waiting for the Pope's blessing, and you are meant to feel embraced.

Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, built in 1658–1670 for the Jesuit novices, is small and oval but set crosswise, so that the visitor is immediately confronted with the altar. The space is clad in reddish marble and gilding, and the story continues upwards: the martyrdom of Saint Andrew is painted above the altar, and a sculpture of him floats up towards the dome, where light falls in from hidden windows. Bernini is said to have called it the only work with which he was entirely satisfied. The same staging of light and marble is found in his sculptures, which you can see under Bernini in the art section.

Borromini: spaces of geometry

Borromini built with cheap materials on cramped sites and made that a strength. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, begun in 1638 on a street corner on the Quirinal, is so small that it is said to fit inside one of the piers that carry the dome of St Peter's. The façade, which was completed only after his death, undulates in curves: concave, convex, concave. Inside everything is white, and the oval dome has coffers in the form of crosses, octagons and hexagons that grow smaller towards the lantern, so that the dome looks taller than it is.

Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, built in 1642–1660 at the short end of the courtyard of Rome's old university, has a plan based on two equilateral triangles forming a six-pointed star. The walls curve alternately inwards and outwards, and the lantern ends in a spiral that twists towards the sky. There are no painted stories here, only form and light. Borromini's architecture is to be experienced and understood, not read as a picture Bible.

Piazza Navona and the legend of the river

The rivalry has given rise to many stories. The best known concerns Piazza Navona, where Bernini built the Fountain of the Four Rivers in 1648–1651 and Borromini later took over the building of the church of Sant'Agnese opposite. It is said that Bernini's figure of the river Nile veils its face so as not to have to see Borromini's façade. The story cannot be true, since the fountain was finished before Borromini began work on the church. The Nile's hidden face alludes to the fact that the sources of the river were then unknown.

Borromini took his own life in Rome in 1667. Bernini lived for another thirteen years and was Europe's most famous artist; in 1665 he travelled to Paris to design the east façade of the Louvre for Louis XIV, but the proposal was never built. Buildings by both are collected on their pages among the architects.

The legacy in Europe and in Stockholm

Bernini's line, the grand gesture and the interplay of architecture, sculpture and light, was carried on by the court architects of France, Austria and Sweden. Nicodemus Tessin the Younger met Bernini during his years in Rome, and Stockholm Palace is a Roman palace in a Nordic capital. Christopher Wren also met Bernini in Paris in 1665.

Borromini's geometry lived on among architects in northern Italy, Bohemia and southern Germany, where 18th-century churches acquired undulating walls and oval spaces. In the 19th century he was often regarded as capricious and excessive; today he is seen as one of the most innovative architects ever. The background can be found in the guide to Baroque architecture and on the style page for the Baroque.

Bernini or Borromini?

Exercise

Which church has a plan based on a six-pointed star?