Sant’Ivo della Sapienza is a Roman
Catholic church located in Rome. This church was built between 1642 and 1660 by
architect Francesco Borromini utilizing the Roman Baroque architecture.
Borromini dedicated this church to Saint Yves of Brittany, a lawyer who became
a monk, gave everything he had to the poor and fought extremely hard against
unjust taxation back in the 13th century. Since then St. Yves is
considered to be the patron of lawyers as well as abandoned children and
Brittany by most Italians (Blunt, 1990). The church’s integration into the majestic
colonnaded Las Sapienza courtyard is both viewed to be awe-inspiring and
ingenious, aspects that make everyone that sees it to fall in love with it.
Towards the
end of the courtyard known as the Giacomo della Porta, the church rises. Here,
the façade is concave in shape thereby molding the church spectacularly into
the courtyard as it is completing it and not disrupting it. The façade on its
part appears like a continuation of the arches of the courtyard except for the
small openings filled with small windows, door and a huge large window close
just above the door. One you look above the façade, there is a large parapet
structure that enables people to see the church’s higher stages located past
the façade. One of the amazing exteriors features of this chapel is the lantern
of Sant’Ivo located on the top of the church. This lantern is topped with a
spiral shape that is surmounted by a cross.
The
interior of this church is very unique to other Roman Catholic churches. This
uniqueness is brought about the shapes of incorporated into the rotunda. These
shapes are attributed to the fact that Borromini liked using geometrical shapes
and pairing columns with an aim of facilitating curves in his architectural
works. Here, the rotunda was contrived of unique shapes, a triangle with the
angles cut and a semi-circles located between the three lines of the triangle. In
order to define the shape of the rotunda, Borromini utilized edges and curves
in equal amounts. The blending of curves and edges is believed to have been
Borromini’s most unique signature. Another eye-catching feature of this church
is the fact that the windows associated with the round parts of the dome are
bigger than the ones associated with the edges. These aspects are easily
noticeable since one of the edgy sections is where the church’s entrance is
situated while the altar is located at a round section on the opposite end of
the edgy section (Borromini, 1971).
References
Blunt, A. (1990). Borromini. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press.
Borromini, F. (1971). SantÍvo alla Sapienza. Place
of publication not identified: Aedes Acutenses.
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