THE OVAL PLAN OF THE BAROQUE

65. CARLO RAINALDi: S. AGNESE,
ROME, BEGUN 1652.

66. GIANLORENZO BERNINI: S. ANDREA
AL QUIRINALE, ROME, BEGUN 1678.

opening out into shallow chapels, the dwarfed arms of the original
Greek cross. The chapels on the right and the left are fragments of
ovals. If completed, they would meet in the centre of the building.
The entrance chapel and the apsidal chapel are also fragments of
ovals. They just touch the side ovals- Thus five compound spatial
shapes merge into each other. We can stand nowhere without
taking part in the swaying rhythm of several of them. The Late
Gothic churches of Germany had achieved a similar wealth of
spatial relations, but by means of forms that seem wiry when com-
pared with the undulating walls of S. Carlo. Michelangelo is re-
sponsible for this turn of architecture towards the plastic. Space
now seems hollowed out by the hand of a sculptor, walls are
moulded as if made of wax or clay.
Borromini's most daring enterprise in setting whole walls into
motion is the facade of S. Carlo which was added in 1667, the year
of his death (pl/Lxv). The ground floor and its cornice give the
main theme: concave—convex—concave. But the first floor answers
by a concave—concave—concave flow, complicated by the insertion
of a kind of flattened-out miniature oval temple set into the centre
concavity so that this bay seems convex as long as one does not look
up to its top part. Such relations in volume and space sound dry
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