The Elusive Genius of Borromini

School of Architecture

12:00 PM ET Wed., May. 07, 2025

One of the most imaginative architects in history, Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), came out of the quarries of Switzerland to transform the face of Baroque Rome. Masterpieces like San Carlo alle Quattro Fontana and Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza have long entered the canon of architectural history. This master builder, pioneer of the graphite revolution in draftsmanship, was both a connoisseur of history and an apostle of inventiveness. In this lecture, Joseph Connors will outline his search over five decades for ways of repositioning an elusive genius in the culture of his time.

The latest lecture from “Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture” welcomed celebrated art historian Joseph Connors to Notre Dame’s Rome campus for a rich reflection on the life and work of Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. Introduced by Dean Stefanos Polyzoides, the lecture brought together students, scholars, and faculty in a packed room that mirrored the intellectual gravity of the subject and speaker alike.

A Life in Rome, and a Life with Borromini

Connors opened by tracing his own relationship with Rome, recalling his first visit in 1972 and the decades of walking, reading, and teaching that followed. Rome, he suggested, is not a city you study from afar—it is a place that teaches through immersion. That long apprenticeship formed the backdrop for his current project: a book titled The Architect in Society, centered on Borromini but also on the social worlds his architecture inhabited.

Rather than a linear survey, Connors offered six case studies—churches, libraries, cloisters, altars—that reveal Borromini’s genius not only as a draftsman, but as a cultural interlocutor. These works, Connors argued, reveal how Borromini’s architecture absorbed, challenged, and even reshaped the social structures of Baroque Rome.

Close Looking: Method and Medium

Connors emphasized the importance of “close looking”—the patient practice of studying form, space, and material without rushing to conclusions. Borromini’s drawings, especially in graphite, were central to this method. Unlike pen and ink, graphite allowed for revision and uncertainty—qualities that reveal Borromini’s iterative process and intellectual openness.

The lecture also drew attention to Borromini’s use of curves—not for ornament, but as architectural argument. Facades bent toward piazzas, walls curled to direct light, and interiors unfolded like stage sets. For Connors, these formal choices were never just aesthetic: they were spatial propositions meant to engage the viewer’s body and mind simultaneously.

Architecture as Social History

One of the most compelling threads in the lecture was Connors’s treatment of architecture as a lens for reading society. Through Borromini’s commissions, he unpacked the patronage networks of noble families, religious congregations, and cardinals vying for status in a competitive papal city. Buildings became sites of symbolic negotiation—between tradition and innovation, between private legacy and public theology.

Connors also pointed to ritual and inheritance as hidden drivers of architectural form. In designing altars, chapels, and tombs, Borromini was not just composing shapes but staging memory and lineage. In libraries and convents, he imagined new kinds of institutional identity. The result, Connors argued, was not a single style but a body of work that vibrated with cultural meaning.

Borromini’s Reputation, Recovered

Connors charted Borromini’s uneven posthumous reception—from 18th-century rejection under Palladian classicism, to 20th-century rediscovery by architects drawn to complexity and contradiction. He mapped Borromini’s influence across Europe, from Piedmont to Paris, and noted how his forms, once seen as eccentric, now seem startlingly contemporary in their spatial intelligence.

A Final Invitation: Curiosity, Patience, and Trust

In the Q&A, Connors fielded questions on archival method, Borromini’s personal library, and his creative tensions with Bernini. But the deepest note came in his closing remarks, where he urged listeners—especially students—to stay with the slow, demanding work of observation. In a world of abstraction and spectacle, Borromini invites us to rediscover the power of reason, beauty, and trust—not only in architecture, but in the patient act of paying attention.

1. Borromini’s Genius: Innovation Through Curves and Space

A defining insight from the conversation is how Francesco Borromini reimagined architectural space as an active, unfolding experience. Joseph Connors explains that Borromini’s use of curves and layered geometry transformed buildings into theatrical, perceptual journeys. His graphite drawings, rich with iteration and spatial complexity, reveal a mind that viewed architecture not as static form, but as dynamic encounter—something to be moved through, felt, and discovered.

2. The Human Drama Behind the Genius

Borromini’s life, though sparsely documented, emerges as a compelling psychological and emotional drama. His rivalry with Bernini—brilliant yet burdensome—shaped Baroque Rome and pushed both architects to new heights. But as Connors notes, that same competition fed Borromini’s isolation and melancholy. The absence of personal writings forces us to read between the architectural lines, piecing together a portrait of solitude, brilliance, and eventual collapse. His tragic end, by suicide, stands as a reminder of the high emotional stakes often hidden behind artistic genius.

3. Architecture as a Social and Political Mirror

Borromini’s buildings were not just feats of design—they were deeply embedded in the ambitions of their patrons. Connors illustrates how every commission reflected a web of political aspirations, spiritual authority, and family pride. Whether for religious orders seeking credibility, or noble families asserting legacy, Borromini’s architecture was a strategic language—encoding identity, power, and even rivalry into the city’s very walls.

4. The Cabinet of Curiosities: A Window into the Mind

Connors highlights Borromini’s vast (though now lost) personal library and cabinet of curiosities as keys to his creativity. These collections—spanning science, nature, and art—fueled his symbolic thinking and architectural innovation. They also connected him to an elite intellectual world, where collecting was both a personal passion and a social performance. Through this window, we glimpse how Borromini’s architectural imagination was shaped by a restless curiosity that moved between disciplines.

5. Suppression, Spread, and Rediscovery of a Legacy

Despite his influence across Europe in the 17th century, Borromini’s reputation faltered during the Enlightenment, when Palladian clarity was prized over Baroque complexity. Connors charts how critics sidelined Borromini’s work as eccentric or excessive. But the story turns: a 20th-century revival reclaimed his architectural vision, recognizing his relevance to modern ideas of spatial experience and experimental form. Today, Borromini’s legacy is once again seen as central—not marginal—to the architectural canon.

6. The Enduring Value of “Slow Looking”

In closing, Connors champions “slow looking” as the foundation of real architectural understanding. Borromini’s work rewards time, patience, and return visits—qualities that modern culture often undervalues. Connors’s own decades of revisiting buildings and drawings underscore how deep meaning unfolds gradually. In this, Borromini offers more than architecture: he teaches a way of seeing, thinking, and being present to the built world.

The Artistic Power of the Pencil: “Pencil allowed the architect to treat space like sculpture, making it more fluid without losing its core geometry.”
— Joseph Connors [00:12:12 → 00:12:18]

Geometry and Movement in Baroque Architecture: “The facade instead became an essay in controlled undulation—curvaceous, but tightly governed by geometry. Triangles were used on the interior to create a firm armature for these very movement walls. For the facade, the triangles moved out into the street to offer anchorage for the architect’s compass—the tool that lets the spectator believe that he might possess a stone-sculpting eye.”
— Joseph Connors [00:16:04 → 00:16:27]

Architecture and Social Identity: “There is nothing like architecture to make a corporate body pose the question, ‘Who are we?’ or ‘What, after the changes of the past generation, have we become?'”
— Joseph Connors [00:26:23 → 00:26:32]

The Creative Transformation of Architectural Legacy: “These strong works are places where an architect cast himself in a direct line of descent with the master through obvious citation, but then manipulates the borrowed forms in a creative, personal way.”
— Joseph Connors [00:54:22 → 00:54:34]

How Contradictory Religious Instructions Inspired Architecture: “A self-contradictory program tends to baffle architects, but Borromini worked it to his advantage. Eventually the monks at San Carlo came to believe that an imaginative design built on a shoestring could express the full range of their evolving corporate character.”
— Joseph Connors [00:31:39 → 00:31:56]