Carlo Maderno

• 1. Introduction

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  Carlo Maderno arrived in Rome in 1588 as a young man from the marble quarries of Capolago, a town in today's Ticino, Switzerland. He came with four of his brothers to work under his uncle, the architect Domenico Fontana. Few would have predicted that this apprentice marble cutter would one day reshape the skyline of the eternal city. What kind of architect emerges from stone-cutting rather than drawing? How does a man hired to modify another genius's plans leave a mark that outlasts the criticism? And what does it mean to be called a father of an entire architectural movement when your greatest work was left unfinished at your death?

• 2. From Stone Cutter to Stylist

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  Capolago, where Maderno was born in 1556, sat within a bailiwick of the Swiss Confederacy. The stone craft he learned there was not merely a trade. It shaped how he understood structure at the level of surface, weight, and shadow. When he moved to Rome, he worked initially as a marble cutter under his uncle Domenico Fontana. That sculptural background gave him a feel for how material responds to light. His first solo commission came in 1596: a facade for the ancient church of Santa Susanna, built between 1597 and 1603. The result was a confident departure. Where the Gesù facade had exemplified the prevailing Mannerist conventions, Santa Susanna broke from them. Maderno arranged columns and pilasters in a dynamic rhythm, pushed the central bay forward so it protrudes from the surface, and concentrated decoration at the center to draw the eye. The design maintains rigour while introducing what one might call an incipient playfulness with the rules of classical design. Around this same period, Maderno also reconfigured the Cerasi Chapel, formerly called the Foscari Chapel, in Santa Maria del Popolo. That restrained project showed his range even before his greatest appointments arrived.

• 3. St. Peter's and Its Compromises

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  The Santa Susanna facade caught the attention of Pope Paul V, who appointed Maderno chief architect of St. Peter's Basilica. The assignment was extraordinary and constrained in equal measure. Michelangelo had conceived St. Peter's as a Greek cross, a symmetrical plan. Maderno was required to extend the nave outward, converting that shape into a Latin cross, and to deliver a palatial facade in front of it. The facade was completed in 1612. Its most deliberate feature is the emphatically enriched balcony above the central door, designed specifically to allow Papal blessings over the gathered crowd in the piazza. The extension that Maderno built has drawn criticism ever since: standing in the Piazza, a visitor cannot see Michelangelo's great dome because Maderno's nave blocks the view. Critics have long blamed this outcome on Maderno's choices. What that criticism tends to overlook is that the approaching avenue leading to the piazza is a modern addition. In Maderno's time, the sightlines were different. He had far less freedom on this project than on almost any other building he touched.

• 4. The Remodeller's Art

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  Most of Maderno's career was spent transforming structures that already existed rather than conceiving buildings from nothing. Santa Maria della Vittoria, whose layout and interior he designed between 1608 and 1620, is one rare case where a project was both designed by Maderno and completed under his direct supervision. Even there, his contribution is often overshadowed by Bernini's Cornaro Chapel with its famous Ecstasy of St. Theresa. After Giacomo della Porta died in 1602, Maderno took over San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, directing the construction of its dome and main body. He was buried there when he died on the 31st of January 1629 at the age of 73. Among his other Roman churches are San Giacomo degli Incurabili and Santa Lucia in Selci, along with the disputed Gesù e Maria. He also designed two chapels inserted into existing churches: the Chapel of St. Lawrence in San Paolo fuori le Mura, and the Cappella Caetani in Santa Pudenziana. His palace work is best represented by the Palazzo Mattei, designed between 1598 and 1618. He also worked on the Quirinal Palace and the Papal Palace at Castel Gandolfo. His final palace commission was the Palazzo Barberini for the Barberini Pope Urban VIII, begun in 1628 and completed in 1633. Within that building, details added later by Bernini and Borromini tend to dominate, even though both architects were influenced by Maderno's own example.

• 5. Sant'Andrea and the Unfinished Facade

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  Sant'Andrea della Valle is typically described as Maderno's masterpiece, though he did not build the whole church. The Theatines had commissioned Giuseppe Francesco Grimaldi and Giacomo della Porta to design it in 1540. The plan follows a familiar Jesuit arrangement: a cruciform layout, a wide nave without aisles, and chapels opening off arched recesses. Maderno's contribution was the dome and the facade. The dome he executed is the third largest in Rome, behind only St. Peter's and the Pantheon. Its drum is windowed, letting natural light fall onto the interior crossing and the high altar below. Giovanni Lanfranco frescoed the dome between 1621 and 1625. Construction of the main structure ran from 1621 to 1625, though the earliest design for the facade dates to 1608. Maderno died before the facade was finished. It was completed to his original conception by Carlo Fontana. What Maderno had designed there is a refinement of the formula that Il Gesù had established. He gave the surface more movement by varying the planes of the frieze and cornice. He increased the drama of light and shade by embedding whole columns into tight dark recesses, so that shadow outlines each column's profile from behind. The rhythm of the grouped elements feels compressed and taut. The column embedded in shadow at Sant'Andrea della Valle became a reference point for the architects who came after him.

• 6. Legacy in Bronze and Stone

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  Maderno designed the base for the Marian column in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. That base later served as the model for numerous Marian columns across the Catholic world. At Ferrara he designed fortifications, showing that his work extended well beyond ecclesiastical Rome. His last project at St. Peter's was the Confessio, a crypt-like space constructed beneath the dome. Privileged visitors such as cardinals could descend through it to approach the burial place of Saint Peter. The marble steps of the Confessio are remnants of the original basilica that stood before the current one was built. Around its balustrade, 95 bronze lamps burn perpetually. Whether or not he was the brother of the sculptor Stefano Maderno, as tradition holds but scholarship does not universally confirm, Carlo Maderno trained and influenced two of the most celebrated architects of the seventeenth century. Bernini and Borromini both worked within his shadow at the Palazzo Barberini, and both absorbed what he had developed. The 95 lamps around the Confessio have been lit without interruption ever since Maderno completed his final work.