Church Saint-Charles-of-Four-Fountains

The Église Saint-Charles-of-Four-Fountains is a church of the Rome Baroque, built by Francesco Borromini for a small convent of a Spanish order. It is at the same time the first of its achievements and the last of them, since the artist will begin it in 1638 but the frontage only the year of its death in 1667.

will complete Structure

It is built on an elliptic level where the plan in Greek cross and the octagone are combined. This ovoid plan is a recovery of that worked out by its rival Gian Lorenzo Bernini for the Église Saint-Andrew of Quirinal to Rome. However, the architect shows the will, here, to work out a rational plan with the difference of Bernini. The perfect occupation of this small ground surface shows the talent of the architect in the rigorous organization of space. The elliptic plan has one objective, to give the illusion of a big space.

Its cupola measures 25,80 m out of 16,25 m and comprises a complex ornament of boxes. The reason consists of circles integrated in polygons where crosses are intercalated, pointing out the religious vocation of the building, and the hexagons. There is no fresco inside the building, the architectural decoration is sufficed for itself, which is rather rare for an Italian cupola. In a traditional way, the pavement takes again the elaborate reason for the cupola. The carved decoration is tiny room to the architectonic parts and creates animation inside the church. It is visible with the level of the columns, the cornice and the vault in bottom of furnace. The complexity of this construction the rhythmic play of the frontage answers, based on the aternance: the concave one and the convex one, columns as well as pediments. Borromini exceeds here its rival Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the originality of the decoration. The frontage comprises three inventions indeed: the balusters head-digs with three edges, the single drawing of the capitals and the pediments dtis " angéliques" frames by the meeting of two wings of angel.

The cloister, low-size, answers a rectangular plan. Borromini develops magistralement, here, the illusionnism baroque, while wanting to give the impression of a space much larger. This stratagem illusionist rests on the use of the scansion, i.e. the multiplication of the columns, imitating the traditional rate/rhythm of a cloister. -- Sofonisba9 November 17th, 2007 with 15:33 (THIS)

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