A new plan by Borromini for the Lateran basilica, Rome

• Autores: Joseph Connors, Augusto Roca De Amicis
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 146, Nº 1217, 2004, págs. 526-533
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The writer discusses a newly discovered drawing by Francesco Borromini showing a plan for the Lateran basilican in Rome. The reconstruction of the nave of S. Giovanni in Laterano in 1646–50 was the most important and expensive commission in Borromini's career. While some contemporary sources have suggested that the construction was a fragment of a still larger plan, the new drawing shows that these sources are substantially correct and that the architect's ambitions were indeed greater than those of his patron, Pope Innocent X. In the drawing, the Lateran's medieval apse, which Borromini left undisturbed during the building campaign of 1646–50, is shown with radical innovations; among other things, it is replaced with an extended choir that seems to be covered with a coffered vault. Some lines written by Borromini on the drawing describe how the pope rejected the alterations; all the evidence points to the identity of this pope as Innocent X and suggests that the new plan should be dated to very early in the history of the commission, almost certainly to 1647.