Sant’Ivo Della Sapienza; Rome, Italy

     

       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 13^th 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.