Issue 1 | 2008
Borromini’s First Encounter with the Unique Architectural Designs of G.B. Montano
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Giovanni Battista Montano, born in Milan in
1534 and trained as a woodcarver, moved to Rome in the early 1570s where his
interest in sculpting was replaced by an intense interest in the antique Roman
ruins found throughout the city and its surrounding countryside. It was
following this move to Rome that Montano embarked on an ambitious project of
drawing hundreds of ancient Roman ruins, imaginary buildings and antique architectural
details, a venture on which he worked until his death in 1621 at the age of
eighty-seven. While the majority of artists in Italy in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries had an interest in and admiration for the artistic and
architectural achievements of antiquity, Montano’s interest and admiration went
much further and dominated the majority of his artistic output during his
career in Rome. He coupled his interest in ancient buildings with an
uninhabited artistic freedom that he expressed in his drawings.
Although Montano, who throughout his lifetime
worked as a model-maker, draughtsman, architect, and lecturer, was not himself
famous, a large body of his intriguing designs based on Roman antiquities
gained him fame and celebrity after his death.[1]
This success was due to the posthumous publication of many of his designs by
his pupil Giovanni Battista Soria (an Italian architect and sculptor).[2]
After Montano’s death in 1621, Soria acquired his master’s collection of
finished architectural drawings and published them as a series of engraved
books, the first and perhaps most important, being Scielta di varij tempietti antichi, published in 1624.[3]
This book of fantastical and imaginative architectural designs included both
reconstructions of ancient Roman ruins as well as unidentified, perhaps purely
invented buildings. It was through Soria’s publication and its numerous later
editions that the unique architectural ideas presented in Montano’s designs
were transmitted to Rome’s young generation of Baroque architects, which
included Francesco Borromini, who would become one of the most important
architects in seventeenth century Rome.
While
the impact of Montano’s works on Rome’s young Baroque architects has been
acknowledged in art historical literature, Montano’s own life and works have
yet to be explored in great detail.[4]
This talented draughtsman, whose work would come to furnish material for the
whole first generation of Roman Baroque architects, approached the
architectural drawing of ruins in a novel way. He was not interested in
recording ancient buildings as they stood in his own time, as the majority of
his predecessors had done, but in studying the architectural and decorative
variety that could be found in Roman architecture and reconstructing these
ruins in drawings. Since Montano never made constructing his designed buildings
a priority, his inventive vision was never stifled nor discouraged by the
practical concerns involved with constructing a building. His designs, which
are often described as fantastical and imaginative, reflect the fact that
Montano was not concerned with historical accuracy, but rather with
experimentation and the promotion of architectural freedom. The free
inspiration in Montano’s designs has been credited as the reason for the
resounding success of the published collections of his works.[5]
Montano’s surviving drawings, the majority of
which are today housed in Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, England, testify
to the draughtsman’s interest in using drawing to document and explore Rome’s
antique architectural “exceptions” to the norm rather than simply making a
compilation of Rome’s most famous monuments.[6]
Along with this unconventional subject matter, Montano’s drawings are made more
unique, and therefore of greater importance, by his almost obsessive habit of
adding multiple freestanding statues to his reconstructions of temples and
tombs.[7]
Additionally, Montano would “correct” the ancient buildings he was drawing by
altering them in order to achieve a greater symmetry and regularity, even
though such symmetry was not necessarily typical of the Roman buildings he was
reconstructing.[8]
Soria writes in his preface to the 1624
publication of Scielta di varij tempietti
antichi that Montano would measure the ruins on the sites throughout Rome
and its countryside and descend into caverns and grottoes when necessary, but
that he would also supplement the ruins with sections and elevations drawn with
his “exquisite imagination”.[9]
Despite this description of Montano’s methods, it can be shown that a number of
Montano’s drawings are actually based on designs by earlier architectural
draughtsmen.[10] On the
other hand, what Soria’s description does reveal is that Montano used the Roman
ruins as a “foundation” or starting point for his drawn, highly decorated, and
mostly imaginary building designs.
What is most important about Montano’s
imaginative explorations of antique Roman architecture is that his works
demonstrated that the architectural precedents in Rome could be used to explore
new ideas that deviated from the city’s more characteristic antique
architecture. As a result, many Roman architects of the early Baroque were
inspired to be inventive in their use of classical architectural features.
Montano’s designs constructed an image of antiquity that meshed with the taste
for the style of Baroque architecture that was being formed at this very time
in the early seventeenth century
The influence of Montano’s part-historical
and part-invented designs is most prevalent in the architecture of Francesco
Borromini (1599-1667). Anthony Blunt writes that within Montano’s corpus of
reconstructions and designs is found a number of fundamental Baroque types of
buildings and conventions in embryo that would become typical of the work of
Baroque architects like Borromini.[11]
Among these most important features are the juxtaposition of concave and convex
forms, curved forms, circular enclosures, and the use of false perspective. The
importance of these ideas must not be overlooked given that they since Montano
began to explore them long before they became popular conventions employed by
architects. Additionally, Montano’s innovative concepts promoted to young
architects the idea of approaching and using traditional architectural features
in unconventional ways. Such freedom of design might never have been cultivated
in early seventeenth-century Rome without the dissemination of Montano’s architectural
ideas.
The seventeenth-century writer Filippo
Baldinucci recorded that by 1619 Francesco Borromini had become so interested
in everything having to do with design and drawing that he wished to go to Rome
to study the city’s antique monuments.[12]
The Roman guidebook writer Fiorvante Martinelli also mentions his friend
Borromini’s interest in ancient architecture and he states that Borromini
regarded and admired the ancients as architectural authorities.[13]
Once Borromini’s interest in all things antique is considered, it is no
surprise that the young architect was drawn to Montano’s drawings of antique
architecture and used them as inspiration for his own works. Although many of
Montano’s reconstructions can today be shown to be pure inventions by the
draughtsman, these designs were regarded by Borromini and other Baroque
architects as reliable reconstructions of ancient Roman buildings.
The direct influence of Montano’s designs on
Borromini’s own architectural works is perhaps best represented through the
comparison of Borromini’s lantern for the church of S.
Ivo alla Sapienza in Rome to Montano’s drawing of an invented
temple-like structure.[14]
Borromini’s lantern of S. Ivo, which he began work on in 1642, corresponds in
all essential details to a unique groundplan drawn by Montano, which is today
preserved in Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.[15]
Both the plan found in Montano’s drawing and Borromini’s design for the lantern
of S. Ivo are in essence circles that have niche-like semicircular indentations
all around the exterior. The resulting appearance of both is a circular plan
with outer walls that are composed of six convex semicircles. The building in
Montano’s drawing has not been specifically identified, but whether it is based
on an actual building or not is of no importance to this study. Rather, this
comparison is one of many that makes seem indisputable the hypothesis that
Borromini studied Montano’s designs and reconstructions.[16]
since such a design seems to have been first explored in the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth century by Montano.
While the influence of Montano’s designs on
the young Borromini has been recognized for many years, it has proven more
difficult to establish with any certainty how or where Borromini first came
into contact with Montano’s designs. In his preface to Scielta di varij tempietti antichi, Soria writes that at the time
of the first publication in 1624 the drawings were in his possession and had
been given to him by Montano himself.[17]
This group of drawings eventually found its way into the collection of Cassiano
dal Pozzo (1588-1657), a Roman antiquarian-connoisseur and art patron.[18]
Dal Pozzo played an important role in Rome during his lifetime since he was one
of very few men who truly realized the value of artists’ sketchbooks. Dal Pozzo
appears to have acquired Montano’s drawings sometime before Soria’s death, but
the reasons for Soria’s selling of the corpus of drawings, which appear to have
been of great artistic and personal value to him, remain unknown.
It is known that Borromini and dal Pozzo were
acquaintances, but not enough is known of their relationship to say that Borromini
would have been permitted to see the drawings in dal Pozzo’s collection, which
was housed in the dal Pozzo family palace on the Via dei Chiavari in Rome.[19]
There exists, however, evidence which suggests that at some point during his
career Borromini was invited to look at the drawings in the dal Pozzo
collection. This visit is proven by the survival of a number of Borromini
drawings that are copies of designs found in the Codex Coner, a Renaissance
sketchbook filled with drawings of antique buildings which was also owned by
Cassiano dal Pozzo.[20] Borromini’s
surviving copies of drawings from the Codex Coner prove that at some point in
time he had the opportunity to study the original sketchbook in the dal Pozzo
collection. This fact has led to the assumption that Borromini must also have
been given the opportunity to study Montano’s original drawings in the same
collection.
The problem which arises from making this
assumption is that the date of dal Pozzo’s acquisition of Montano’s drawings
from Soria is unknown. Decoding this situation is therefore made more
problematic because it is possible that dal Pozzo did not acquire Montano’s
drawings until closer to the middle of the seventeenth century, and yet
Borromini’s work begins to show the influence of Montano’s designs earlier than
this. Nevertheless, research into Borromini’s early activities in Rome helps
bring to light the circumstances in which he may have had access to Montano’s
drawings as early as 1625.
While it is difficult to prove how and where
Borromini saw Montano’s drawings, it is easier to assume that he would have
seen, and perhaps even owned, one of Soria’s publications of Montano’s designs.
These publications were widespread throughout Rome during the seventeenth
century and even if Borromini himself did not own a copy, he had many learned
acquaintances who were likely to have possessed at least one of the
publications of Montano’s designs. There exists evidence, however, that
suggests that Borromini studied the original drawings and not just the engraved
versions. For example, the elaborate fluting used by Borromini on his fireplace
of the Sala di Ricreazione at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri is an almost exact
copy of the fluting in a Montano drawing of Roman columns which was neither engraved
nor published in the seventeenth century.[21]
The conclusion that may tentatively be drawn from this fact is that at some
point in time Borromini observed and studied Montano’s original drawings.
The connection between Borromini and
Montano’s works is made clearer by studying Borromini and G.B. Soria’s
activities in Rome during the 1620s. Borromini had arrived in Rome in 1619 and
secured a position working on the most important building project in Rome at
the time, St. Peter’s Basilica. During his early years in Rome he worked under
Carlo Maderno, the chief architect at St. Peter’s. It was not long before
Borromini was entrusted with designing some of the innumerable architectural
features of the basilica and soon after he was recognized as one of the best draughtsmen
in Rome. As Maderno aged and his hands became crippled with gout, he relied
more on Borromini’s skills as a draughtsman capable of producing innovative
architectural designs and solutions. Eventually Borromini, who became Maderno’s
favourite assistant, was placed in charge of overseeing all designs and
planning that came from the aging architect’s office.[22]
It was at this time that Borromini first came
into contact with another young artist gaining importance in Rome at the time,
Gian Lorenzo Bernini. In 1624 Bernini was commissioned by Pope Urban VIII to
complete the crossing of St. Peter’s and the design of the Baldacchino. Since Maderno was still the head
architect of St. Peter’s at the time, Bernini and Borromini had to collaborate
on this important feature of the new basilica. The design of the Baldacchino
has traditionally been attributed to Bernini, while Borromini’s contribution to
the project has been largely overlooked. Although by this time Bernini was
recognized as one of Italy’s greatest sculptors, he had no training or
experience as an architect and consequently relied on Borromini’s technical
skills and experience to help carry out his commissions at St. Peter’s.[23]
The oversight regarding Borromini’s role in
designing the Baldacchino is in part caused by the fact that it is difficult to
determine who is responsible for having designed the different components of
the Baldacchino. Bernini obviously played the main role in the invention of the
Baldacchino as a whole, yet all surviving drawings for the columns and
entablature are by Borromini.[24]
Nevertheless, the roles these two young architects played in the design of the
Baldacchino help shed light on how Borromini may have come into contact with
Montano’s original drawings.
As part of the process of the Baldacchino
design, Bernini hired a sculptor in 1625 to make wooden models of the twisted
columns, complete with their capitals and bases, which would be the supports,
as well as major decorative elements, of the Baldacchino. The sculptor entrusted
with the job of making these important wooden models just happened to be
Montano’s very own pupil Giovanni Battista Soria.[25]
It was around this very time of the model
commission in the mid-1620s that Soria was in possession of the majority of Montano’s
drawings and was in the process of publishing hundreds of the designs as
engravings. Scielta di varij tempietti
antichi had only just been published by Soria in 1624, one year before he
received this important commission. The surviving drawings of the early
Baldacchino designs, almost all exclusively in Borromini’s hand, might be taken
to show that Borromini would have communicated with the sculptor Soria, who was
responsible for bringing to life Bernini’s and Borromini’s design. If it is
true that Soria and Borromini became acquainted while working on the
Baldacchino project, then it could very well have been possible that Soria
provided the young Borromini access to Montano’s original drawings. Perhaps
Soria detected both Borromini’s talent as a draughtsman and his interest in
antique architecture and wished to show the young architect the outstanding
drawings by his deceased master.
The possibility that Soria himself provided
Borromini with the opportunity to study Montano’s drawings has never before
been considered. While it is possible that Borromini might have seen the
engraved version of Scielta di varij
tempietti antichi before ever meeting Soria, it may have been the
opportunity of studying Montano’s original drawings that made the greatest impact
on Borromini. The quality of Montano’s drawings is far superior to the engraved
versions of his designs since they showcase Montano’s talent as a draughtsman
through the precision of his drawings, the masterful use of an ink wash to
generate three-dimensionality, and the delicate use of pen and ink to trace the
finest and most minute of details.[26]
Since the books of engravings were produced after Montano’s death, the job of
engraving his designs was left to an engraver who was not able to fully capture
the delicate details present in Montano’s original drawings. The opportunity to
study Montano’s original architectural designs and reconstructions would most
definitely have been appreciated by a talented architect, draughtsman and
amateur antiquarian like Borromini.
The
intention of this paper is not to clarify which features of the Baldacchino
were designed by Borromini and which by Bernini, but rather to demonstrate that
it was through the process of designing the Baldacchino for St. Peter’s
Basilica that Borromini likely became acquainted with Soria. To date the
question of how Borromini gained access to Montano’s drawings has remained one
of the missing links in Borromini studies. This paper seeks to use the
knowledge of Borromini’s participation in the designing of the Baldacchino to
forge such a direct link between Borromini and Montano’s original drawings.
Montano’s designs influenced Borromini during a crucial period of his
development as an architect, and so Montano’s role in the development of Borromini’s
personal style must not be ignored. Borromini’s works have been described as
possessing “a pure and indisputable notion of the Baroque,” and Montano’s
drawings undoubtedly played a fundamental role in the development of this
style.[27]
Bibliography
[1] Lynda
Fairbairn, Italian Renaissance Drawings
in the Collection of Sir John Soane’s Museum (London: Azimuth Editions,
1998), 541. This catalogue includes photographs of the close to three-hundred
Montano drawings in Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, England. The subjects
explored by Montano in these drawings include temples, tombs, sarcophagi,
friezes, oil lamps, columns and capitals. In almost all of his drawings Montano
used a combination of graphite, pen and ink, and ink wash in order to generate
drawings that were detailed and possessed a sense of volume. While the engraved
versions of Montano’s designs reproduce his original drawings quite accurately,
the engravings fail to translate the subtle shading and sense of volume
achieved by Montano in his drawings.
[2] Birgitta Ringbeck, Giovanni Battista
Soria: Architekt Scipione Borghese (Münster: Lit, 1989), 9-16.
[3] The seventeenth century publications by Montano are listed in chronological order: Montano, Giovanni Battista. Scielta di varij tempietti antichi. Edited by Giovanni Battista Soria. Rome: 1624. Montano, Giovanni Battista. Architettura con diversi ornamenti cavati del antico. Edited by Giovanni Battista Soria. Rome: 1624. Montano, Giovanni Battista. Diversi ornamenti capricciosi per deposito o altari. Edited by Giovanni Battista Soria. Rome: 1625. Montano, Giovanni Battista. Tabernacoli diversi. Edited by Giovanni Battista Soria. Rome: 1628. Montano, Giovanni Battista. Architettura con diversi ornamenti cavati del antico. Edited by Calisto Ferrante. Rome: 1636. Montano, Giovanni Battista. Raccolta. Edited by Calisto Ferrante. Rome: 1638. Montano, Giovanni Battista. Le cinque libri di architettura di Gio. Battista Montani Milanese. Edited by Giovanni Jacomo de Rossi, 1684. Montano, Giovanni Battista. Li cinque libri di architettura di Gio. Battista Montani Milanese. Second Edition. Edited by Giovanni Jacomo de Rossi, 1691.
[4] For an
overview of the career of G.B. Montano see Fairbairn p. 541-734 and Joseph
Connors, “G.B. Montano,” in The Macmillan
Encyclopedia of Architects, ed. Adolf K. Placzek (NY: Free Press, 1982),
276-279.
[5] Paolo Portoghesi, Roma Barocca,
trans. Barbara Luigia La Penta (London:
The MIT Press, 1970), 44.
[6] Connors, 227.
[7] For an example of Montano’s liberal addition of freestanding sculptures to his designs see the first engraved building in Scielta di varij tempietti antichi (1624). These added sculptures are almost always standing in contrapposto and are reminiscent of Hellenistic sculpture, for example the Laocoön, Vatican Museum, Vatican City.
[8] Roberto Weiss,
The Renaissance Discovery of Classical
Antiquity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), 59.
[9] G.B. Soria and
cited in Connors, 227.
[10] Montano copied numerous buildings which had been explored in the designs of his predecessors, who include Baldassare Peruzzi, Sebastiano Serlio, Pirro Ligorio, and Andrea Palladio. In Montano’s typical fashion, he would elaborate on the ornamental features of the architectural designs he was copying. His elaboration of the Roman ruins studied and recorded by his predecessors made his designs more appealing to the architects of the seventeenth century who preferred more elaborate and ornamental styles of art and architecture.
[11] Anthony Blunt,
“Introduction,” in Studies in Western Art
(NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 8.
[12] Baldinucci as
cited in Rudolf Wittkower, Studies in the Italian Baroque (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1982), 158
[13] Anthony Blunt,
Borromini (London: Penguin Books
Ltd., 1979), 27.
[14] For a
reproduction of Montano’s temple see Blunt, Borromini,
43 and compare to Borromini’s plan for the lantern of S. Ivo alla Sapienza,
also reproduced in Blunt, Borromini, 40.
[15] Fairbairn,
669. See for a reproduction of Montano’s original drawing.
[16] Montano
was one of the first architects and draughtsmen of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth century to explore in great detail architectural designs based on
the use of convex and concave shapes. Therefore he can be credited with helping
to instigate the use of such forms in later architecture.
[17] Fairbairn,
552.
[18]
Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule, “The Dal Pozzo-Albani Drawings of Classical
Antiquities: Notes on Their Content and Arrangement.” The Art Bulletin 38 (1956): 31.
[19] Fairbairn,
552.
[20] Blunt, Borromini, 37.
[21] Ibid., 41. For
a comparison of Montano’s original design for a column see Blunt pg. 42. The
column drawn by Montano is unique in that he draws a variation on the typical
purely vertical fluting found on columns. Rather than having each raised
portion of the fluting end where the column joins the base, Montano curves the
raised portion upwards in a U-shape and it continues to the top of the column.
In the space between the two raised portions Montano adds one vertical raised
line, as well as small ornamental raised details at the bottom of the column.
This very unique arrangement is echoed almost identically in the fluting of a
pilaster designed by Borromini for the fireplace in the Oratory of St. Philip
Neri in Rome. The similarities between the designs make it seem unlikely that
such parallels between could have been a coincidence.
[22] Wittkower, 158.
[23] Blunt, Borromini, 21.
[24] For drawings by Borromini related to this project see Heinrich Thelen, Die Handzeichnungen (Graz: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1967).
[25] Fairbairn,
550.
[26] See
Fairbairn’s Italian Renaissance Drawings
in the Collection of Sir John Soane’s Museum for photographs of the over
three-hundred Montano drawings in the Soane collection. The Centre Canadien
d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal has three original
Montano drawings in its collections.
[27] Jean Rousset, La Littérature de L’àge Baroque en France:
Circé et le Paon, trans. Timothy Hampton (Paris: José Corti, 1954), 8.