THE BAROQUE IN ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES C. l6OQ-C. 1760

when described; when seen, however, there is brio and passion in
them, and also something distinctly voluptuous, a swaying and
swerving as of the naked human form. Watch how the two west
towers of S. Agnese stand away from the main front of the church,
separated by the convex curves of the two sides of the facade centre,
or how in Pietro da Cortona's—S. Maria della Pace (1656-57) the
front is spread out—with straight wings on the ground floor, but a

sweeping convex curve on
the first floor out of which
the centre of the facade
reaches forward, ending in a
semicircular portico on the
ground floor and a slightly
set back shallower convex
curve on the first floor (pi.
LXVI). Columns and pilasters
crowd together on it in a way
that makes the composition
of Vignola's Gesii front seem
restrained in the extreme.

In fact the majority of
Roman Baroque facades kept
to the basic composition of
Vignola and only endowed it
with a new meaning by way

QUATTRO FONTANE, BEGUN 1635. FRONT, 1667. of an excessive abundance of

columns jostling against each

other, and the most unconventional use and motives of decoration
(fig. 68). None however was more daring inhis detail than Borromini.
In the facade of S. Carlo the curious oval windows on the ground
floor should be observed with the palm leaves that surround them,
and with a crown above, and some sort of a Roman altar in relief
beneath, and so, motif for motif, up the facade until the ogee arch
at the top is reached, and the polygons of odd shapes and diminishing
sizes that decorate the cupola inside. Every one of these details is
senseless, unless they are seen together and as parts of a super-
ordinate decorative whole.

To understand the Baroque it is essential to see it in this per-
spective. We are too much used—especially in this country—to
looking at decoration as something that may or may not be added

126

FRANCESCO BORROMINI t S. CARLO AIJLB