Can a church, a building, that is, be a drama queen?
Apparently, it can:
That’s Francesco Borromini’s baroque masterpiece, Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, acting all melodramatic on Thursday morning under the rain.
(side note: if you want to visit the church, be aware it’s open only 9:00 AM to noon on Sundays, with service at 11:00, and on Wednesdays at 2:00 PM, for service.)
I was there to attend a talk on Plautilla Bricci, hosted at the Archivio di Stato di Roma, i.e. Rome’s branch of the historical archives of Italy that’s inside Palazzo della Sapienza, the former headquarters of Rome’s oldest university, established in 1303.
Incidentally, 1303 is also the year Ivo Hélory, aka Sant’Ivo, died — on 19th May, in Minihy-Tréguier, Brittany, where he was also born. He was canonised in 1337 by pope Clement VI, and is the patron saint of lawyers, and also of the destitutes, as in his life he defended the rights of poverty-stricken people, which earned him the title of “advocate of the poor”. An inscription in the cathedral of Tréguier reads:
Sanctus Ivo erat Brito Advocatus et non latro Res miranda populo
(rough translation: “St. Ivo was a Breton, a lawyer yet not a thief, which is quite a remarkable thing for the people”…)
But let’s go back to Plautilla Bricci… who was she? — you might wonder, especially if you aren’t a friend of mine, nor a subscriber of my now defunct newsletter on all things baroque (from which I’m now about to copy and paste here a couple of paragraphs about her, because that’s what archives are for)…
You know when you visit Rome and go to San Luigi dei Francesi, enter the church and bypass everything else just to marvel at those Caravaggios in the Contarelli chapel (last one on the left), and then leave? Well, shame on you, because in doing so you’re missing the chapel of St Louis (second chapel on the left), which was designed and built by Plautilla Bricci, the first documented woman architect in pre-industrial history (no, that’s not lady Elizabeth Wilbraham…
…as there's zero evidence, i.e. drawings and/or other documents, to confirm British scholars’ claim), who also painted the altarpiece dedicated to the French saint, between 1676 and 1680:
Plautilla was born in Rome in 1616, to Giovanni Bricci and Chiara Recupito, received her early artistic training by her own father, who was a versatile artist himself, and subsequently by attending the studio of Cavalier d’Arpino, the same in which young Caravaggio was also trained.
Her first known work is a painting depicting a Madonna with Child, made sometime in the 1630s, which became the main altarpiece of the church of Santa Maria in Montesanto (also known as “Chiesa degli Artisti”), in piazza del Popolo:
As the legend goes, the painting miraculously completed itself overnight, and Plautilla was kind of invested by holiness herself because of that, which eventually came in handy: “saint” Plautilla never married, she made vow of chastity, but without taking the veil as was usually expected of respectable unmarried women back then — she just wanted to be free to fulfill her artistic and professional potential, and that's precisely what she did.
She enrolled in the Accademia di San Luca, the first institution of its kind to welcome women, as a painter, but it's debated where and how she received her architectural training, since the Accademia didn't offer such a path of studies to women...
It wasn't easy being an unmarried woman, working as a painter and above all also as an architect, in 17th century Rome — and in fact some of her architectural works at the time were either credited to her brother, Basilio1, or to Elpidio Benedetti, who was Cardinal Mazarin’s right-hand man in Rome (in fact he was some sort of art dealer for the Cardinal, and even after Mazarin’s passing in 1661, he was still responsible for Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s trip to Paris from 2nd June to 20th October 1665).
Benedetti promoted her work, for instance he brought her design for the steps to Trinità dei Monti to Pope Alexander VII (a member of the Chigi family) for consideration — the pope didn’t choose her design in the end, yet it’s amazing that in 17th century Rome the work of an ambitious woman such as Plautilla could be taken seriously by the then powers that be.
Elpidio Benedetti also commissioned her the design of a villa for himself just outside the walls of Rome, on the Janiculum hill: Villa Benedetta, also known as Il Vascello, for its resemblance to a vessel over cliffs.
Alas, the peculiar villa was almost completely destroyed in 1849, during the French siege of Rome, and only the “cliffs” remain visible today, but we still have Plautilla’s drawings for it:
please don’t get me started on Basilio having been dedicated a street in Rome, while there’s none named after Plautilla…
I only just learned about her a few years ago from a show I think no one knew about at the Barberini Corsini. Thank you for telling us more!
Grazie!