Thoughts on the Accidental: Francesco Borromini’s Sketch Plan for the Roman Oratory

Abstract

The autograph drawing by the architect Francesco Borromini for the Oratorio dei Filippini project (Rome, 1637–50), housed in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (E.510–1937), could be regarded as the graphic expression of the accidental in the architectural project on account of both the reasons that drove the architect to make it and the desire to capture reality without concealments or idealisation. But a comparison of the sketch and the engravings published in Opus architectonicum could also cast light on the project process typical of Borromini: a procedure not without contradictions because, despite being applicable to the world of details and particularities, it would not forgo a certain aspiration to the ideal. The attention the architect pays, in each instance, to the specific nature of the problem likewise poses the question of legitimacy outside the realms of the absolute rules of classicism and, in a way, anticipates the immanent legality that typifies the modern project.