The book „Opera di Francesco Borromino“ written by Sebastiano Giannini is full of illustrations and no text. In order to find suiting books with the help of Alice I kept her brain with Xenotheka Library and as a topic of conversation i used architecture. Because Sebastiano Gianninis book has almost no writing, i really had to break down what it shows in the images. So I made a selection of the words : opera ; renaissance ; barque ; illustrations ; Francesco Borromino.
I scrolled though her recommendations a bit and came across the book « Renaissance and Baroque Architecture » by Payne.
I looked it up on Xenotheka and it caught my interest, because it is a specific literature about the time Francesco Borromino lived and constructed.
In the book many examples of catherals, operas, churches, etc. are shown and discussed.
The author really goes into insane details with many different topics.
For example Global Geographies, Wars, Religion, Architectual Culture, etc.
I believe, that in order to understand the ways why Borromino has built like he did and to understand every detail about why, what and where, Payne’s literature can really help.
So you can basically read Payne’s text and compare what you read with what you see in Gianninis illustrations.
The second book that caught my interest was Malgraves Architectual theory.
His literature is not an objective point of view but his own thoughts and impressions on architecture.
So it is the complete opposite of Payne.
Malgrave also speaks about Borromino a couple of times, but rarely in a good way.
He criticises the architects for how and out of which motivation they built what the built.
Borromino is often set in context with other architects like Bernini and Michelagnolo.
It is really a debate on wether this architecture was good or not and an important thing is, that he gives clear examples on what did not work out.
So on one had we have Paynes literature, which helps with understanding Borrominos architecture and on the other hand we have Malgraves literature, which helps us question Borrominos architecutre. And I believe that when talking about architecutre, you should always do both.
By which I mean we should observe but also criticise what we see.
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