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GIACOMO VIGNOLA: S. ANNA DEI PALA-
FRENIERI, ROME, BEGUN C. 1570.

THE BAROQUE IN ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES C. l60Q~C. Ij6o
Baroque church architecture, a
development belonging in Italy
chiefly to the second half of the
iTth century. In Vignola's S.
Anna the longer axis of the oval
is placed at right angles to the
facade. This is repeated by most
of the others, but S. Agnese in
Piazza Navona (fig. 65), begun
in 1652 (by Carlo Rainaldi and
provided by Borromini with
its North Italian two-tower
facade), consists of an octagon in a square, with little niches in the
corners, and extended by identical entrance and choir chapels in west
and east, and by considerably deeper north and south transep tal chapels
so as to produce an effect of a broad oval parallel to the facade, with
masonry fragments sticking into its outline. Bernini placed a real
oval with eight niches into the same position in his late church of
S. Andrea al Quirinale, 1678 (fig. 66). Vignola's composition was
taken up by Maderna at S. Giacomo al Corso, 1594* and by Rainaldi
at S. Maria di Monte Santo, 1662. This, incidentally, is one of the
two identical churches by the Porta del Popolo, marking the start
of three radiating streets towards the centre of Rome.
The oval even captured France, especially by the efforts of Louis
Levau, as we shall see later. Meanwhile by far the most brilliant
paraphrase on the oval theme is Borromini's S. Carlo. The church can
serve better than any other to analyse what tremendous advantages
the Baroque architect could derive from composing in ovals instead
of rectangles or circles. Whereas all through die Renaissance spatial
clarity had been the governing idea, and the eye of the spectator
had been able to run unimpeded from one part to another and
read the meaning of the whole and the parts without effort, nobody,
standing in S. Carlo, can at once understand of what elements it is
made, and how they are intertwined to produce such a rolling,
rocking effect. To analyse the ground plan (fig. 67) it will be best
not to set out from the oval at right angles to the facade which,
broadly speaking, the church seems to be, but from the domed
Greek cross of the Renaissance. Borromini has given the dome
absolute supremacy over the arms. Their corners are bevelled off so
that the walls under the oval dome read like an elongated lozenge
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