Sant'Ivo - the Most Sublime Church in Rome

Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza
1642–1660, Borromini
Corso del Rinascimento 40
06 68 64 987

The seeming simplicity of this beautiful white interior space illuminated from the lantern above is a joy to experience. The geometry of its star-shaped plan is revealed by its structure and evokes a passion for the art of architecture, as only great works like this can.

Richard Meier
The acclaimed architect Richard Meier designed The Getty Center and the Museum of Television & Radio in Los Angeles; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; the Museum of Applied Art in Frankfurt; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome; and the Arp Museum in Rolandseck. He received the Pritzker Prize in 1984.

So many reasons to see this: the ins and outs of its undulating surfaces, the pure whiteness of its interior, the tactile sense of its sculpted surfaces, its moldings,
its strange curves. The way it forces your glance upward in a rush. The way in which the exterior of the cupola disappears in a flash of flame. The doorway to the exterior that announces “Jurisprudentia” is a sculpted rebus: one panel has a law book and a balance (jus) the other a snake looking at itself in a mirror (prudentia). Look at the snake reflection toothily smiling back—all sculpted in travertine.

Ingrid D. Rowland
Ingrid D. Rowland lives in Rome, where she is a professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and writes for both scholarly and general readers. Her books include The Culture of the High Renaissance, The Scarith of Scornello, and Giordano Bruno.

Note the fantastic, whimsical spiral lantern and the neighboring tiled roofs on the equally whimsical and exciting square of Sant’Eustachio.

Philip Pearlstein
Philip Pearlstein’s works are in major museum collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is considered to be among the leading American realist painters of the second half of the twentieth century. He continues to paint and exhibit and is represented by Robert Miller Gallery in New York City.

It’s an intensely Baroque structure with very sculptural interior volumes. The spare white spaces clearly show
Borromini’s energetic formal inventiveness, held in tension by his rigorous geometry.

Martin Puryear
Martin Puryear’s sculpture is in the collections of many major American museums. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award and a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grant.