Guarino Guarini: Celebrating 400 Years
by Susan Klaiber, appearing in Volume 46
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the baroque priest-architect Guarino Guarini (1624-1683). Guarini, a Theatine priest active as a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, as well as an architect, designed buildings throughout the Italian peninsula and across Europe. He enjoyed his greatest success in Turin with buildings like the Theatine church of San Lorenzo, the Cappella della Sindone (Chapel of the Holy Shroud), and the Palazzo Carignano, constructed for the Savoy dynasty. His posthumous Architettura civile (1737) is perhaps the most important architectural treatise of eighteenth-century Italy, and its plates disseminated Guarini’s designs throughout Europe.
A century ago, at the time of the 300th anniversary of his birth, Guarini was just beginning to be studied by scholars such as A. E. Brinckmann as part of the larger reassessment of baroque art and architecture during the first decades of the twentieth century. This reassessment followed nearly two centuries of disdain. “Good luck to anyone who likes Guarini’s architecture, but count him among the madmen!” exclaimed the neoclassical critic Francesco Milizia in 1768. Only after the Second World War, beginning in the 1950s with the work of Rudolf Wittkower and Paolo Portoghesi, and culminating in the 1960s with a modern edition of his architectural treatise and a groundbreaking conference, did Guarini and his work become widely known and a part of the architectural canon of Italian baroque. He is arguably the most well-known Italian baroque architect who operated exclusively outside Rome.
The twists of fate exacerbated this uneven critical fortune, with several of Guarini’s buildings suffering grave damage over the centuries. A city gate in Turin was destroyed when the town’s fortifications were levelled in the Napoleonic era. His Theatine church of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale in Paris was never completed and mostly demolished in the early nineteenth century. His façade for the Theatine church of Santissima Annunziata in Messina was destroyed in the devastating earthquake of 1908. The interior of his Theatine house in Modena was gutted when the building was transformed into a courthouse around 1960. And the Cappella della Sindone in Turin, perhaps his greatest work, was ravaged by fire in 1997. Fortunately, a painstaking twenty-year-long restoration saved the Shroud chapel, and it reopened in 2018.
Guarini’s anniversary year presents an opportunity to take stock of his career after four centuries of vicissitudes. This review considers the familiar as well as the less familiar and highlights some of the underlying principles of the architecture that characterized his work.
Early Years and Theatine Vocation
Guarini was born in Modena on January 17, 1624, to Rinaldo Guarini and Eugenia Marescotti. He was baptized five days later, on January 22, in the church of Santa Margherita, with the court wardrobe master Marcello Querenghi serving as godfather, suggesting his parents had ties to the d’Este court in Modena.
Like an elder brother before him, and a few younger ones afterward, Guarini joined the Theatine order at San Vincenzo, Modena, entering at the age of fifteen in November 1639 and then serving his novitiate in Rome at San Silvestro al Quirinale. He officially professed the order in Rome in April 1641. Though some questions remain about where he received his further training, by the time of his ordination in early 1648, he was back in Modena.
As for many other priests in the orders founded during the Counter-Reformation, Guarini’s training had equipped him to work as an architect for the Theatines as well as other patrons both religious and secular. Over the course of his career, he developed several projects for his hometown of Modena, beginning with his first documented design: a cardboard model of a lightweight dome for the Theatines’ church of San Vincenzo in 1653. The crossing piers of the church seemed unable to support a traditional dome, and in meetings with the duke and his architects, the Theatines offered Guarini’s design as a solution. The meeting participants agreed that Guarini’s dome should be built, but ultimately the design remained unexecuted. The episode, however, confirms Guarini’s interest in creative dome designs at the beginning of his architectural career. These would become his trademark during his years in Turin.
Innovative Buildings in Turin
After interludes in Messina (mid-late 1650s-1662) and Paris (1662-1666), Guarini arrived in Turin in late 1666, where he remained based until his death in 1683. His fame as an architect rests largely on his three major works in Turin. All commissioned by members of the Savoy dynasty, these buildings and a few others in the surrounding Piedmont region established the Theatines’ standing as a leading representative of Piedmontese Baroque architecture.
San Lorenzo was a Savoy court church built to commemorate the Spanish-Savoy victory over the French at the Battle of Saint Quentin on August 10, 1557, the feast day of Saint Lawrence. Construction began on Guarini’s design in 1670, and Guarini himself celebrated the inaugural Mass in May 1680. The rich marble embellishment of the church interior testifies to its enormous expense, funded by the Savoy dynasty and important figures in the Savoy court. Details such as the fanciful Corinthian capitals bearing crowns in the third chapel on the right (originally dedicated to Saint Louis, King of France) attest both to Guarini’s architectural imagination and to the dynasty’s royal aspirations.
The nave of the church, on a roughly square plan, is visually delimited as an octagon defined by eight serlianas (a motif with four columns framing three openings, the central one arched and wider), four of which span the corners of the plan to create chapels. Above the whole, an extraordinary octagonal ribbed dome perforated with windows admits ample light to what would otherwise be a dark nave surrounded on three sides by other structures and bordered on the fourth side by a dark narrow street. Beyond the nave, an oval presbytery houses the high altar, and a shallow retrochoir curves around this oval.
The insubstantial serlianas of the nave appear to support pendentives at each corner of the nave, and these in turn appear to support the dome. The serliana and pendentive structures, however, are not load bearing. The false pendentives mask the real structure of the church consisting of four enormous brick arches rising from behind the corner chapels to their peak just above the oval windows perforating the apparent cornice ring of the dome on the main axes of the church. Four smaller brick arches on the diagonal spring from the larger ones, bridging the corner chapels and rising above the oval windows on the diagonals of the cornice ring. The church thus has a double-shelled structure: the apparent structure of serlianas, pendentives, and a perforated cornice ring “supporting” the dome, and the real structure of brick arches, reinforced with timber trusses, hidden behind the pendentives and nave walls.
A few blocks away, the Cappella della Sindone houses the chief relic of the Savoy dynasty, the shroud believed to be that in which Jesus was buried. Always employed for both political and religious purposes by the dynasty, the location of the chapel between the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista and the ducal (later: royal) palace, accessible from both, emphasizes this dual function. Guarini came to the project at the end of a long design process that began in the late sixteenth century. When work began on his project in 1667, the somber black Frabosa marble sheathing the interior had already been selected and construction on the circular-plan chapel had risen to the top of the lower order according to plans by Bernardino Quadri. One of Guarini’s first interventions was to design the fantastic bronze Corinthian capitals of this order, interwoven with the Crown of Thorns and punctuated with the nails of the Passion and passion flowers.
The main tasks facing Guarini were to complete the superstructure of this chapel and integrate the access from the palace and cathedral sides. He began by imposing a tripartite organization of the plan based on a triangle inscribed in the circular plan, with a point of access at each vertex—two from the cathedral, and one from the palace. The further vertical development of the plan and elevation occurs in multiples of three, a clear reference to the Trinity. The elevation of the lower zone—already extant when Guarini arrived—is divided into nine vertical sections (where the chapel opens to the cathedral choir, the division between two sections is eliminated). Above this, a truncated vault of circular plan is articulated as three pendentives pierced with oculi, with the arches between them pierced with similar oculi for a total of six openings. As in San Lorenzo, the pendentives are false, masking a hidden structure. These transition to a traditional drum for the dome rising above, with six arches, separated by wall segments with niches, opening onto six windows, with a passageway inserted between the wall segments and the exterior wall of the building—another kind of double-shelled structure.
At the top, the extraordinary dome of the chapel caps the structure. The dome is composed of six stacked levels diminishing in size toward the top, each hexagonal in plan, and each rotated 30 degrees in respect to the one below. Six arches, each with a window underneath it and a bracket support in the center, form the sides of these hexagons, with the springing of the arches resting on the peaks of those below. Above the top level, a domical vault rests on a squat drum pierced by twelve oval windows to complete the structure. This crowning feature is partially screened from the chapel below by a twelve-pointed star open in the center to an image of the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering in the brightly illuminated space at the top of the dome. The result for the viewer below is a perspectival illusion of great height, with light from the perforated dome flooding into the dark chapel below.
In a practical sense, Guarini’s perforated dome at the Cappella della Sindone responds to the same challenges he faced at San Lorenzo—how to illuminate a building that at its lower levels is surrounded by other structures, making the insertion of conventional windows impossible. This is a recurring principle of his architecture, one he even alluded to in his treatise where he explains, “if the site is surrounded by houses, and cannot get light except from above, it is necessary for the architect to choose a type and disposition of building that receives light from above.”
Finally, among Guarini’s works in Turin, we should consider the Palazzo Carignano. Although it is a secular building, some of Guarini’s typical design principles recur here, and the residential building type informed the architect’s designs for Theatine religious houses. The palace (1679-1684) was commissioned by Emanuele Filiberto, Prince of Carignano, a cadet branch of the Savoy dynasty with aspirations to inheriting the duchy. These aspirations included taking on the dynasty’s quest for a royal title. Guarini’s building draws on elements of both Italian and French palace design, with particular inspiration from Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s unexecuted first design for the Louvre (1665). This Louvre reference highlights the prince’s royal ambitions. The undulating brick façade embellished with custom fabricated terracotta ornaments endows the palace with a powerfully tactile, dynamic presence toward the piazza. Two main stories with associated mezzanines articulate the façade with an attic atop the upper mezzanine. The ground floor features Doric pilasters, while Corinthian pilasters adorn the piano nobile.
Inside, the main wing is dominated by an oval salone on the piano nobile, reached by the two branches of a curving stairway rising from the ground floor atrium and reflecting the curvature of the façade. Like San Lorenzo and the Cappella della Sindone, the salone featured a ribbed vault, here with an oval oculus. A clerestory above this admitted ample light to the space below, but the opening was partially screened by a lightweight oval vault suspended in the space. A ceiling painting, brightly illuminated by the hidden clerestory, adorned this vault. Again, Guarini cleverly devised striking illumination of a space using light from above streaming from hidden sources for maximum dramatic impact. Unfortunately, the original configuration of the salone was destroyed when it was converted to a parliament chamber in the nineteenth century.
Looking Beyond Turin
Most accounts of Guarini’s architecture highlight his works for the Savoy court, but to understand the full range of Guarini’s architectural output, it is worthwhile considering several more modest buildings within the architect’s oeuvre.
Two lesser-known Guarini buildings from the last decade of his career illustrate how the same principles that characterize his most famous projects also found their way into unassuming commissions. These principles include an inventive use of ornament, double-shelled structures, and carefully calibrated illumination from above. Both buildings stand outside Turin, and neither was widely recognized as a work by the architect until the second half of the twentieth century.
Theatine House of San Vincenzo, Modena
The Theatine house in Modena is Guarini’s only building in his native city. The bishop of Modena laid its cornerstone on November 27, 1675, with construction continuing through 1678. Guarini designed the building in two phases beginning in 1662. The general organization of the building remained the same throughout both phases, but final details were settled only as construction began.
Two main stories, each with a mezzanine, plus an upper clerestory level set back from the façade comprise the building. The house originally featured a U-shaped plan: a main block along the street with the principal façade, with shorter wings of lesser height extending to the rear, one along the side street, the other along the adjacent church. Guarini’s “opera a fascie” articulation (simple plain bands) partitions the bays of the ground floor and its associated mezzanine. Above, at the piano nobile level, Ionic pilasters separate the bays, and a string course demarcates the upper mezzanine. Each level is crowned with a simple entablature with vertical channels enlivening the frieze. A modest cornice tops the upper entablature. On the courtyard side, the windows bear simple oval and diamond-shaped medallions as ornament, while terracotta quatrefoils reminiscent of the more elaborate terracotta elements at Palazzo Carignano enliven the upper entablature.
Inside, two tall corridors, each corresponding to the height of a story plus its mezzanine, run the length of the main wing and furnish the chief circulation routes. Rooms open directly off both corridors, as well as from the corridors’ upper galleries, corresponding to their mezzanine levels. The Ionic order of the façade reappears here, tying together the piano nobile and its mezzanine, supporting the clerestory and continuing into a band across the vault above. This elevation, with its seemingly skeletal structure playing against a varied background of surfaces, depth, and transparency, has often been compared with Borromini’s Re Magi chapel in the Propaganda Fide (1660-64). The generous clerestory with thermal windows admits copious light to the upper corridor, another manifestation of Guarini’s preoccupation with designs that maximize illumination. Tragically, this spectacular space no longer exists, since the interior was destroyed in the late 1950s when the building became the Tribunale di Modena (Modena courthouse), but the exterior remains intact.
The Modena house is roughly contemporary with Palazzo Carignano and in many ways recalls the palace in Turin, although as a religious-institutional version of the noble palace. Both share an emphasis on a lively brick façade and innovative interiors flooded with light. Whereas court ceremonial defined the major circulation patterns in the palace, and thus the distribution of rooms, corridors, and staircases, the dictates of clausura and the prescribed daily schedule of the religious order informed the planning of those features in the Theatine house. In both buildings, Guarini created grand, dramatic spaces, although naturally less regal for the Theatines. Still, a noble visitor to the Modena house in 1697 remarked that “…from the outside it does not look like the house of a religious order, but rather the palace of some great lord.”
Santa Maria d’Araceli, Vicenza
Guarini designed two churches for Vicenza. The Theatine church of San Gaetano (1675) was never built but is better known through its inclusion in Guarini’s treatise Architettura civile. Santa Maria d’Araceli, for a convent of Clarisse (Poor Clare nuns), was only rediscovered as a work by Guarini thanks to Paolo Portoghesi in 1957. The Araceli was begun in 1675, although it may have been designed earlier. Supervision of construction was entrusted to the local architect Carlo Borella, to whom the church was long attributed.
The Araceli is built on an oval plan encased in a rectangular box, a construction such as that employed for instance by Jacopo da Vignola at Sant’Anna dei Palafrenieri, Rome. Guarini combines this design with another feature that looks back to some unexecuted sixteenth-century precedents, the oval plan surrounded by an ambulatory, yielding two concentric ovals, an outer one and an inner one. This combination creates two virtually independent structures: the outer box, and an inner skeleton of four piers defining the inner oval and supporting the dome.
The exterior of the encasing box features Guarini’s typical “opera a fascie” articulation on three sides. The façade continues the rectilinear containment of the oval, here with a logical progression of the Corinthian order in the lower story from two freestanding columns at each outside bay with respondent pilasters behind them, to freestanding columns just barely disengaged from the wall where the wall steps forward, and finally culminating in pilasters framing the door.
Inside, the eight windows of the dome and the equal number of its lantern flood the church with light. Unencumbered by surrounding buildings, Guarini could also include windows in the nave on the transverse axis and entrance wall. The viewer hardly perceives the interior of the church as oval, since the four piers repeatedly block the view to the oval perimeter wall, preventing it from being read as a continuous curved wall. On the interior, the plan’s inner oval as defined by piers, columns, and three-dimensional arches makes an awkward transition without a drum to the circular ribbed dome. This central space, dominated by the circular dome, also de-emphasizes the oval form. On the exterior, the dome is encased in a drum in the Northern Italian tradition. Portoghesi noted borrowings from two Renaissance masters in the church. The dome derives from Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome at the Pazzi chapel in Florence and the almost classic orthodoxy of the interior Corinthian order is nearly Palladian in style, and this in Vicenza, the city so closely identified with Palladio. The Araceli gives us an impression of Guarini as the imaginative architect of smaller, less ambitious but more affordable churches, away from the elaborate court commissions of Turin.
Other discoveries await Guarini enthusiasts willing to venture beyond Turin. In Piedmont, the Castello di Govone and the garden façade of the Castello di Racconigi represent Guarini’s forays into the Piedmontese country house tradition blending features of French chateaux and Italian villas. In Verona, the high altar of the former Theatine church of San Nicolò all’Arena uses a rich selection of marbles and statues of saints with special meaning for the Eucharist to fulfill a civic vow dating to the plague year of 1630. The common thread in these as in all of Guarini’s designs is a delight in architectural invention that still captivates us 400 years after his birth.