page_title: Francesco Borromini
section_title: Honours
hierarchical_section_title: Francesco Borromini / Honours
context_page_description: Francesco Borromini, byname of Francesco Castelli, was an Italian architect born in the modern Swiss canton of Ticino who, with his contemporaries Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, was a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture.
  A keen student of the architecture of Michelangelo and the ruins of Antiquity, Borromini developed an inventive and distinctive, if somewhat idiosyncratic, architecture employing manipulations of Classical architectural forms, geometrical rationales in his plans and symbolic meanings in his buildings. He seems to have had a sound understanding of structures, which perhaps Bernini and Cortona, who were principally trained in other areas of the visual arts, lacked. His soft lead drawings are particularly distinctive. He appears to have been a self-taught scholar, amassing a large library by the end of his life.
  His career was constrained by his personality. Unlike Bernini who easily adopted the mantle of the charming courtier in his pursuit of important commissions, Borromini was both melancholic and quick in temper which resulted in him withdrawing from certain jobs, and his death was by suicide.
context_section_description: Francesco Borromini was featured on the 6th series 100 Swiss Franc banknote, which was in circulation from 1976 until 2000. This decision at that time caused polemics in Switzerland, started by the Swiss Italian art historian Piero Bianconi. According to him, since in 17th century the territories which in 1803 became the Canton Ticino were Italian possessions of some Swiss cantons (Condominiums of the Twelve Cantons), Borromini could neither be defined Ticinese nor Swiss.
  He is the subject of the movie La Sapienza by Eugène Green released in 2015.
caption: Borromini on a 100 francs note
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