The Genius in the Design by Jake Morrissey

Author:Jake Morrissey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

FOUR MONTHS LATER, on October 9, eight artists and architects, including Bernini, presented their solutions. As the official Architect of St. Peter’s, Bernini also was expected to put forward his proposals for decorating the nave. According to a discorso, or official report, written about the contest, the Congregazione received campanile designs from Bernini, Andrea Bolgi, Pietro Paolo Drei, Martino Longhi, Giovanni Battista Mola, Santi Moschetti, and the father-and-son duo of Carlo and Girolamo Rainaldi.

The anonymous author of the discorso, who could have been Virgilio Spada, indicates that designs by Borromini and Paolo Maruscelli, the architect Borromini had replaced at the Oratory, had been expected by the Congregazione but did not appear, though Borromini is known to have at least mused on paper about an alternative to Bernini’s towers. His proposed towers were lighter, less cumbersome-looking alternatives to Bernini’s and were more in keeping with the towers Maderno originally had in mind. Instead of two rows of columns, Borromini envisioned one row, which he situated firmly above Maderno’s foundations, answering Longhi’s stinging charge that Bernini’s were “situate in falso,” placed over a void. McPhee believes that Borromini drew up these plans prior to the meeting of the Congregazione “but then thought better of it…. His sketches remained private thoughts”—a personal solution to a public problem.

Perhaps Borromini expected the Congregazione to turn to him in desperate appeal: Please fix the problem, please solve our dilemma. Perhaps he wasn’t convinced that his designs were worthy to adorn the façade of St. Peter’s. Perhaps he was simply too busy with other projects to turn his full attention to the problem. Or perhaps he just wasn’t willing to let others have input on his own work—or receive credit for his brilliance. Whatever the reason, Borromini stood on the sidelines, ready to critique and to crucify.

Some of his detractors even believed that he had the ear of the pope and was whispering denunciations of Bernini’s towers and the artist himself into it—a kind of Iago of architecture.

Once the drawings were presented to the Congregazione, they were shown to several architects for their opinion and input, including Borromini, Maruscelli, and Bernini. According to Martino Longhi, who was also shown the drawings—he was “given the right not to approve a single design”—there was no clear winner. However, Longhi did agree with Borromini’s assertion that the south tower’s weight must be lightened to ease the strain on the foundations (though Longhi also wanted the foundations reinforced). Borromini’s point of view was gaining credence.

Four months passed until the next general meeting of the Congregazione on February 20, 1646, when the designs were formally presented to the pope at the Vatican (though there are indications that discussions had occurred in the interim). Bernini had revised his designs based on Carlo Rainaldi’s radical notion of lopping off the heavy attic tier of the façade and building the bell towers directly on their foundations, an idea that was greeted with enthusiasm by architect and cleric alike.

At the meeting, which was attended by six

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