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Guarino Guarini

Guarino Guarini (Modena, 17 January 1624 – Milan, 6 March 1683), a Theatine cleric, mathematician and architect, is the man who gave Turin its two boldest domes: that of the Royal Church of San Lorenzo and that of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. In the last seventeen years of his life he designed, for the Savoy court and the Turin aristocracy, churches, palaces and colleges that still mark the city centre today, beginning with Palazzo Carignano.[1][2]

A Theatine between Modena, Messina and Paris

Also called Camillo, he came from a family of Ferrarese origin. In 1639 he left for Rome to begin his novitiate at the Theatine convent of San Silvestro, where he stayed for about six years.[2] Back in Modena, in 1655 he was ordered to leave the city after the "fierce opposition" he met with at the ducal court.[2]

Years of travel followed. From 1660 he was in Messina, engaged on the Theatine buildings of the Annunziata along with their convent, on the church of the Somaschi fathers and on that of San Filippo; then in Paris, where in 1662 the first stone of his church of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale was laid and where he was also elected professor of theology. In the French capital, in 1665, he published his Placita philosophica: for Guarini, architecture was never separate from mathematics and speculative thought.[2] He also designed churches far afield: Santa Maria della Divina Provvidenza in Lisbon, Santa Maria di Ettinga in Prague (1679), and San Gaetano in Vicenza.[2]

Arrival in Turin and San Lorenzo

It was the Theatines who called him to Turin. According to the Treccani encyclopaedia he was already at work there in 1666, on the building site of San Lorenzo, begun in 1634 and then left stalled; the Città e Cattedrali portal instead dates his call, to extend the Cathedral, to 1667.[1][3] In 1668 Duke Charles Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy named him his "engineer and mathematician."[1]

The chronology of the church of San Lorenzo, facing onto piazza Castello, is marked out by the parish registers: in 1670 the foundations of the new building site were being dug, on 27 October 1679 the dome was closed, and on 12 May 1680 Guarini himself celebrated the inaugural mass there.[4] The dome, 55 metres high, is built on eight pairs of interlacing arches that trace an eight-pointed star, with the octagonal lantern at its centre; the windows opened between the arches break up the light. Eight marble columns appear to hold up the vault, while the structural work is actually done by a framework of large arches hidden behind the visible shell.[5] Guarini himself spoke of an effect of "awe for the human soul"; the art historian Giulio Carlo Argan read into it, according to the parish's own website, "the instant in which mathematical calculation coincides with the course of the imagination reaching towards God."[5] In the presbytery he designed the first altar detached from the rear wall, so that the altar table would stand out more.[6]

"Here G. brought his type of dome to perfection, giving it its most restrained and most harmonious embodiment"

Mario Labò, entry "Guarini, Guarino", Enciclopedia Italiana, 1933

The Chapel of the Holy Shroud

With his 1668 ducal appointment he was entrusted with the chapel built to house the Holy Shroud, annexed to the Cathedral.[1][3] Guarini clad it in black marble from Frabosa and crowned it with a dome of superimposed drums, each lower and more polygonal than the one below, rising to form an almost continuous spire.[3][2] Work on the dome lasted twenty-eight years and was finished only in 1694, more than ten years after the architect's death.[3]

On the night of 11–12 April 1997 a fire devastated the chapel: the heat and the water used to put it out caused a thermal shock that reduced the interior to a heap of rubble, while the Shroud itself was carried to safety by firefighters.[7][3] To redo the decoration, the old Frabosa quarry was reopened, so as to use the same stone Guarini had chosen.[3] The restoration, which cost 30 million euros with contributions from, among others, the Compagnia di San Paolo, was completed after twenty-one years: the chapel was returned to the public in September 2018, as part of the Royal Museums' visitor route, in the presence of minister Alberto Bonisoli, Sergio Chiamparino and Chiara Appendino.[8][9] Don Carlo Franco, writing in the diocesan press, called it "a bold and astonishing" piece of architecture.[9]

Palazzo Carignano and his other Turin works

In 1679 Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy-Carignano commissioned him to build the family palace.[10] Guarini looked to Gian Lorenzo Bernini's design for the Louvre and drew from it a red-brick façade with a curving line, with an oval entrance hall and two symmetrical staircases rising to an elliptical hall, once covered by a double vault.[10][11] The building was completed after his death, and according to Labò some details may be the work of Francesco Barocelli.[2] In the nineteenth century the palace became the seat of the first Italian Parliament[10]; today it houses the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento.[11]

In the same years he began the Collegio dei Nobili for the Jesuits (1678 according to Mario Labò, 1679 according to the online Treccani), today the seat of the Academy of Sciences.[2][1] The original design of the church of the Sanctuary of the Consolata is also his.[2] For the church of San Filippo he conceived three domes in a row: left unfinished, it collapsed between 1714 and 1715.[2] Outside the city he redesigned Racconigi castle, and in 1680 he prepared a design, never carried out, for the church of the sanctuary of Oropa.[12][2]

The MuseoTorino portal sums up his weight on the image of the Savoy capital like this:[13]

"With the domes of the palatine chapels of the Holy Shroud and of San Lorenzo, which rise above the city's unbroken skyline like marvellous reliquaries, Guarino Guarini drew the 'marvellous' face of the Savoy presence in Turin."

MuseoTorino, "Torino: storia di una città. La città moderna"

The same page places him in the sequence of the capital's architects: after Vitozzi and the Castellamonte family, before Garove, Filippo Juvarra and Alfieri.[13]

Treatises and legacy

In Turin Guarini published the Modo di misurar le fabbriche (1674) and a Trattato di fortificazione (1676); the Disegni di architettura civile ed ecclesiastica came out in 1686, and the Architettura civile was printed posthumously in 1737, edited by Bernardo Vittone.[2] He died in Milan on 6 March 1683.[2]

The Treccani encyclopaedia describes his method as the opposite of the classical rule: buildings that "do not aim at unity, but at a surprising connection of individually distinct parts," in which every traditional norm is deliberately contradicted.[1] Mario Labò measured his renown beyond the Alps: "G.'s influence was very great and long-lasting; outside Italy, especially in Bohemia and Franconia."[2]

Pages linking here

Related articles: Cappella della Sindone, Palazzo Carignano, Palazzo Reale, Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Santuario della Consolata, Turin Cathedral

Sources

  1. Treccani – Enciclopedia on line
  2. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana (Mario Labò, 1933) —
  3. Città e Cattedrali (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana)
  4. Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo
  5. Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo
  6. Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo
  7. La Voce e il Tempo — 27 September 2018
  8. ANSA — 27 September 2018
  9. La Voce e il Tempo — 18 September 2018
  10. Residenze Reali Sabaude
  11. Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano
  12. Treccani – Enciclopedia on line
  13. MuseoTorino

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