Architectural Masterpieces: From San Carlino to Villa Capra
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (San Carlino)
Borromini, 1667-68
Known as “San Carlino” due to its small size, this church is the most representative work of Borromini and, paradoxically, was built around the same time as Bernini’s colonnade of St. Peter’s. San Carlo is Borromini’s first independent work and the last one he worked on. He was 35 years old in 1634 when the Spanish Discalced friars in Rome commissioned him to build the monastery and church. The first phase, which includes the convent and the cloister, ended in 1637.
From this moment, the small size of the church stands out, already manifesting the breakdown of the traditional rectangular shape. The angles, which should show the intersection of the planes in perspective, become salient and convex bodies. Borromini further reduces the small space with large columns, avoiding symmetry and distributing intervals with an alternating rhythm, wider and closer, eliminating the angles to cause a sharp turn of pace. Downstairs, the solid dominates the void, unlike on the top floor, where the alternation of columns and arches is intended to accentuate the brightness.
In a second stage, the works were entrusted to the church. Borromini resolved the elliptical plan by providing the major axis longitudinally. On the ground floor, you can see how Borromini structures from a clear geometric space. Two equilateral triangles joined at the base seem to be the genesis of the work, but also what could be the anamorphosis of the circle. Both solutions show a rationalization of the Baroque language. The plan is elliptical, with a sense of contraction. Around this ellipse are arranged diagonally chapels.
The interiors feature a unique order of large columns grouped in fours with niches and moldings continuous walls, which seem to further reduce the space and force the wall to flex, and appear distorted oval dome that crowns the internal space. Therefore introduces a flexible plant and uses convex and concave shapes that are articulated in a wavy wall, which results in a dynamic interior space. Thus, this set of small size, they can not be measured or limited, creating a size that makes it more in the eyes of the beholder. The facade of the temple was the last work by Borromini developed, launched on 1665, was completed by his disciples 1682. This is the most fragmented, discontinuous and antimonumental of Baroque architecture. It is conceived as an object, an ornament, a reliquary. Breaks the symmetry of the intersection, lies the body of the church and seems to be off the wall. With its three flexion, with the game of the columns and the emptying of the niches, dense landscaping and the continuing division of the plane, seems to have no other purpose than to push up the oval with the image or relic that breaks the coronation the building and ends with an odd prime. It consists of two floors of three blocks each. The central first floor, the door to the temple, is convex and two concave sides. In contrast, on the second floor, the three streets are concave. The cornice marks the main movement of all concave-convex-concave on the ground floor and upper level movement draws a concave-concave-concave broken only by the large medallion that presides over the whole composition and a small temple with elliptical balconies.
It breaks down the façade and completely surpasses the traditional distribution followed since the Middle Ages with its respect for the basic geometric forms (square, rectangle, circle) and the symmetry rule which had prevailed in the buildings of Brunelleschi and Alberti. Borromini’s facade breaks down completely altering all the relationships and creating an intersection of very different elements together (columns with small openings on both floors, the concave-concave frieze run with big columns, including pictures with their niches, the reliefs on the upper floor). The front view presents itself as an independent unit within the building with which it is unrelated.
Take care that suits its facade to the street, looking not surpass the limits of this linear and respecting their unit using the same materials of construction that the surrounding buildings. Far, then, is to frame the building into a majestic setting that highlights its uniqueness and nobility, as did Bernini.
It uses classical elements in 2 floors with entablature and columns. Home undulating 2 bodies and three blocks, concave and convex sides to the center, which again is concave on the upper floor having a convex aedicule open a window, on which two angels holding up a large oval medallion. The balustrade mixtilinear energizes the upper profile. Cornices pronounced and use of major and minor overlapping orders.
Chateau de Versailles
Le Vau and Mansart
Located in Paris, the conception of the Chateau de Versailles follows the rules of French classicism. The facade is organized into three levels, corresponding to the service area (ground floor), Main Hall (main floor), and intimate rooms (upper floor). The facade has a first body as a base and ends on the third floor with small windows. The progress of certain parts of the wall decorated with columns is one of the few concessions to the Baroque.
The facade is 500 meters long with a central pavilion and two wings. It has 2 floors and an attic. The underside is padded with large stone arches. The large windows are decorated with a central motif interrupted by groups separated by columns and pilasters. The penthouse is under a balustrade decorated with trophies to hide the roof. Its construction was ordered by Louis XIV.
Plant San Pedro Vatican Rome. Twine
1502 – Cinquecento Architecture
This centralized facility features a Greek cross inscribed in a square, with the arms of the cross standing out slightly from the sides of the square.
The plant division is very clear: the central area is filled with a large hemispherical dome on scallops, and the four major arms are covered with barrel vaults and an apse finished off in an oven-covered vault. Angles are inserted in other small spaces that repeat, in smaller dimensions, the central cross. Four square towers complete the set. Entries are four, one for each lower arm.
The elevation recovers the value of the estate and the external volumes: a large central dome with four small domes (for the construction of the angles) and four square towers at the ends.
Villa Capra (La Rotonda)
Palladio, 1567-69
PLANT: Presents a room in the center circle (roundabout) covered with a dome, which forms a square, each of whose ends have four broad porches as a Roman temple. These are articulated and exástila prostyle structure and a wide staircase access.
It thus combines two apparently contradictory elements, such as the central axis of the roundabout over the square, further enhanced by the dome, with four wide porches that create long axes.
This provision is fully Mannerist, yet its formal elegance and simplicity of approach to the classical concept of antiquity, hence its subsequent dissemination in the Neoclassical.
OUTSIDE: This civil building, a villa or cottage, is possibly clad in brick, stucco, leaving the noble materials (marble or stone) to the bases of the columns and window moldings.
Central structure and a square has four equal access gates. The structure of these accesses, which function as viewpoints, is that of Roman temples: the podium with stairs in its front and a portico of Ionic exástilo, architrave, frieze and pediment undecorated decorated with sculptures its 3 angles (as akroteria). In its sides has openings in arch graduating visual step under the window opening corners of the bays.
The villa has a first floor as a base, which includes the main floor porches and a decor that is reduced to the windows topped by pediment of the corners. An entablature which coincides with that of the portals between this third plant, the lower and four openings (2 on each side of the frame).
The composition of the façade offers a successful interplay of relations between the elements that compose it, as shown in graduating heights established between the triangular pediment, the three openings that are under it and the dome element governing all.
The Villa Capra or Villa Rotonda, near Vicenza, projects to a square, high, with a high podium, where getting on all four sides monumental staircases leading to broad porticos topped by pediment hexastyle; inside, all with centralized a large hall with a cupola. The purity and symbolism of the square, representing the earth, and the circle, which includes the spiritual, are combined into a single floor around a circular room (rotunda), surrounded by rectangular rooms. Climbing stairs to the upper floors are embedded in the wall that supports the dome.
The building is built on top of a hill, with magnificent views in all directions. The proportion and symmetry are characteristic of Palladio’s villas.