In her contribution to the conference Guarino Guarini e l\u2019internazionalit\u00e0 del barocco of 1968, silvia bordini presented a historical overview of the criticism of guarini, claiming at one point that remarks of eighteenth-century writers \u2018accomunano guarini nella generale valutazione negative dell\u2019arte barocca\u2019. As bordini rightly claims, this criticism of guarini was indeed part of a broader trend of censuring the work of architects whom we would now characterize as \u2018baroque\u2019.<\/p>\n
But late-eighteenth-century criticism of guarini was also unique, and in significant ways not discussed by bordini. Prominent theorists \u2013 jacques-Fran\u00e7ois blondel, Francesco Milizia, antoine Quatrem\u00e8re de Quincy, and others \u2013 made clear distinctions between guarini\u2019s failings and those of other architects, and particularly those of borromini, the architect whom modern scholars most often consider the focus of eighteenth-century criticism. Quatrem\u00e8re de Quincy, in his well-known definition of \u2018baroque\u2019 as an architectural term, in fact singled out guarini alone as \u2018le ma\u00eetre du baroque\u2019.<\/p>\n
My discussion focuses on what made guarini\u2019s architecture unique, and \u2018baroque\u2019, in the minds of late-eighteenth-century critics. Such a discussion seeks to reevaluate current perceptions of what the term \u2018baroque\u2019 meant when it was introduced into architectural criticism and to recognize the criticism of guarini as a distinctive and crucial part of the formation of these early notions of \u2018baroque\u2019 architecture.<\/p>\n
In so doing, my discussion also calls for a reappraisal of the significance of Piedmontese architecture in the formation of the concept of \u2018baroque\u2019 architecture more generally. In her contribution to the conference Guarino Guarini e l\u2019internazionalit\u00e0 del barocco in 1968, silvia bordini discussed the history of guarini\u2019s reception from the late seventeenth century to the 1960s, and claimed that eighteenthcentury writers\u2019 criticism set guarini within the broader critical attack on architects of his day.<\/p>\n
In this paper, I take issue with this claim; I argue instead that guarini held a unique position in eighteenth-century criticism. This uniqueness had to do with what critics perceived as his relation to borromini: guarini came to stand as perhaps the most important model of an architect who followed borromini. This particular idea of guarini is significant because, as I will proceed to show, it was transformed into a fundamental element of Quatrem\u00e8re de Quincy\u2019s concept of the \u2018baroque\u2019 in architecture.<\/p>\n
Indeed, recognizing the place of the criticism of guarini in the early development of the concept of the \u2018baroque\u2019 in architecture indicates that that concept itself needs reconsideration; \u2018baroque\u2019 was not to do simply with seemingly overly elaborate architectural forms per se, but rather with a particular mode of imitation of such forms. Overall, then, this paper undertakes to show not only that guarini was a unique figure in eighteenth-century criticism, but that the recognition of this uniqueness allows for a substantial re-evaluation of what \u2018baroque\u2019 meant when codified in architectural discourse.<\/p>\n
My discussion takes the form of a response to bordini\u2019s paper, but it nonetheless also responds to approaches to the study of guarini in the 1960s more broadly. Bordini spoke of guarini\u2019s relation to borromini as a preoccupation of guarini\u2019s critics from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. In scholarship of the 1960s, the subject appears repeatedly in discussions of guarini\u2019s architecture; argan, carboneri, griseri, Millon, and Pommer, as well as a number of other speakers at the 1968 conference on guarini, commented on the relation between the two architects.<\/p>\n
My approach differs from that of these scholars in that, instead of attempting to validate or diminish the idea that borromini influenced guarini, I consider the idea of this influence as a historical construct and also seek to show how analyzing this construct as it was presented in eighteenth-century texts yields fruitful insight into architectural theory of the time. I want to begin the discussion by paying closer attention to comments on guarini made by two of the eighteenth-century critics bordini cited, Francesco Milizia in his biography of guarini included in his Le vite de\u2019 pi\u00f9 celebri architetti d\u2019ogni nazione e d\u2019ogni tempo (1768) and antoine Quatrem\u00e8re de Quincy in his definition of the term \u2018baroque\u2019 in his Encyclop\u00e9die m\u00e9thodique: Architecture (1788).<\/p>\n
Bordini implied, and thus rightly perceived, that Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s reception of guarini was influenced by Milizia\u2019s remarks. At the same time, however, she seems not to have realized the more precise nature of this influence. Milizia\u2019s influence on Quatrem\u00e8re is more apparent if, instead of comparing Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s text with the original Italian edition of Milizia\u2019s Vite, as bordini did, we compare it with the French translation of Milizia\u2019s text. The line of particular interest is translated from the Italian, \u2018se vi \u00e8 stato mai architetto che abbia portato all\u2019ecesso le stravaganze borrominesche, \u00e8 certamente il P. Guarino Guarini\u2019, to the French, \u2018de tous les architectes qui ont adopt\u00e9 le style bizarre de borromini, il n\u2019en est aucun qui ait donn\u00e9 dans tant d\u2019ex\u00e8sque le pere guarino guarini\u2019.<\/p>\n
The idea of guarini being an architect who took borromini\u2019s extravagance to excess in the Italian edition is transformed in the French into the idea that guarini, of all the architects who took up borromini\u2019s bizarre style, was the one who took it to the greatest excess. Two important shifts take place in this act of translation: borromini moves from being extravagant to being bizarre and guarini goes from being simply one example of a follower of borromini\u2019s who took his faults to excess to being the example, of all of borromini\u2019s followers, who took his faults to the greatest excess.<\/p>\n
The idea of bizarreness taken to an extreme, or its superlative form, the association of borromini with bizarreness, and the example of guarini as the architect who took borromini\u2019s bizarreness to an extreme reappear in Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s definition of \u2018baroque\u2019. The relevant parts of his definition are as follows:<\/p>\n
le baroque, en architecture, est une nuance du bizarre, il en est, si on veut, le rafinement, ou, s\u2019il \u00e9toit [sic] possible de le dire, l\u2019abus. Ce que la s\u00e9v\u00e9rit\u00e9 est \u00e0 la sagesse ou go\u00fbt, le baroque l\u2019est au bizarre, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire qu\u2019il en est le superlatif. […] Borromini a donn\u00e9 les plus grands mod\u00e8les de bizarrerie. Guarini peut passer pour le ma\u00eetre du baroque. <\/em><\/p>\n Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s \u2018baroque\u2019 thus embodied elements of a pre-existing concept in architectural discourse, this portrayal of guarini as a model of a follower of borromini as presented by Milizia. To this pre-existing concept, Quatrem\u00e8re applied the term \u2018baroque\u2019. The term, as we know, was already in use in architectural discourse at the time and had already been defined in an architectural dictionary, but Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s \u2018baroque\u2019 clearly diverged from earlier usage: prior to Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s definition, the term \u2018baroque\u2019 in architectural discourse did not have a clear association with the term \u2018bizarre\u2019 and, even while it was associated with the term \u2018bizarre\u2019 in more general parlance, it was defined as one of its synonyms, not its superlative.<\/p>\n Moreover, the term had not been applied to guarini in this way that bound its meaning to guarini\u2019s relation to borromini. By constructing a particular semantic relation between \u2018baroque\u2019 and \u2018bizarre\u2019 and by using guarini\u2019s relationship to borromini to illustrate this relation, Quatrem\u00e8re, on the one hand, created something that was strikingly new in terms of the meaning of the \u2018baroque\u2019 in architecture and yet, on the other hand, in part, simply reframed and allotted a term to a pre-existing concept. If we accept Milizia\u2019s, or, more precisely, his translator\u2019s, portrayal of guarini as a source for Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s \u2018baroque\u2019, we must also acknowledge that this portrayal of guarini was not itself either entirely original or unique.<\/p>\n Before the publication of Milizia\u2019s Vite, a number of French writers had identified guarini as an architect who followed or created work in the style of borromini. Moreover, the idea that guarini\u2019s work embodied that which was particularly bad about borromini\u2019s had also been voiced: in his Cours d\u2019architecture (1683), for example, Fran\u00e7ois blondel claimed that guarini not only wanted to follow borromini, but that he had \u2018choisi ce qu\u2019il y avoit de plus extravagant dans ses [borromini\u2019s] pratiques\u2019 as well.<\/p>\n Although Milizia\u2019s critique clearly differs from these others in its specification that guarini took borromini\u2019s faults to excess, it nonetheless certainly grew out of such criticisms. The idea that guarini had taken borromini\u2019s faults to excess was, however, no longer unique to Milizia by the time of Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s publication. In fact, the idea circulated in French texts in the years following the publication of Milizia\u2019s Vite: one writer, for example, claimed that guarini \u2018adopta la maniere du borromini, & en ch\u00e9rit sur sa bizarrerie\u2019 and another that, \u2018avec moins g\u00e9nie que le boromini [sic], il [guarini] a beaucoup rench\u00e9ri sur tous les d\u00e9fauts qu\u2019on lui reproche\u2019.<\/p>\n Thus, while particular terms and semantic relations of Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s definition of \u2018baroque\u2019 seem to come directly from Milizia, the ideas about guarini that Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s term embodied belonged to more long-standing and widespread perceptions of guarini as a follower of borromini\u2019s. Recognizing the link between Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s definition of \u2018baroque\u2019 and the history of the reception of guarini is significant in two ways. First, for our understanding of guarini\u2019s early reception, it underscores that he was viewed as exceptional by eighteenth-century critics, albeit for his failings rather than his merits.<\/p>\n Second, in terms of our understanding of eighteenth-century architectural theory more generally, recognizing the link between Quatrem\u00e8re and guarini\u2019s reception shifts the context within which we understand Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s concept of the \u2018baroque\u2019. Early studies of the development of the broader concept of \u2018baroque\u2019 treated Quatrem\u00e8re\u2019s definition as just one of many examples of the etymology and usage of the term, and in so doing created what became a standard framework within which his definition was understood.<\/p>\n Perhaps as a result, subsequent scholars have failed to recognize that Quatrem\u00e8re did not simply absorb the meaning of \u2018baroque\u2019 from general parlance into architectural discourse. Rather, he created a new meaning of \u2018baroque\u2019 that was specific to architecture and, moreover, he did so by endowing it with an idea that was current in architectural discourse, yet for which there was no specific term. In particular, Quatrem\u00e8re created terminology that described architecture that was perceived as imitative of and worse than that of borromini, a broader phenomenon of which guarini was a prime example.<\/p>\n Marion Riggs<\/strong> In her contribution to the conference Guarino Guarini e l\u2019internazionalit\u00e0 del barocco of 1968, silvia bordini presented a historical overview of the criticism of guarini, claiming at one point that remarks of eighteenth-century writers \u2018accomunano guarini nella generale valutazione negative dell\u2019arte barocca\u2019. As bordini rightly claims, this criticism of guarini was indeed part of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1666,"featured_media":42329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-architects","category-history-of-architecture"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nIndependent scholar, Italy<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"