page_title: Giovanni Battista Montano
section_title: Influence on Borromini
hierarchical_section_title: Giovanni Battista Montano / Legacy / Influence on Borromini
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: ricostruzione ipotetica di un tempietto di Tivoli
context_page_description: Giovanni Battista Montano was an Italian architect, designer and engraver of primary importance as a recorder of Antique Roman architectural remains.
context_section_description: Borromini also knew and used ancient models. Baalbek, Petra, Sabratha and Leptis Magna are the finest examples of the late Imperial architecture in the Eastern Empire admired by Borromini. Some of them have elements almost identical in plan with Borromini’s designs. But he certainly could have not known those buildings, because those ancient monuments were buried under sand till the twentieth century. It is likely that more buildings of this kind existed in or near Rome in the seventeenth century that is now shapeless masses of brickwork. It seems that Borromini relied on drawings of Montano, whose reconstructions of ancient monuments appeared in engraved form between 1624 and 1664 in a series of volumes called Li cinque libri di architettura. The original drawings were in the collection of the Roman collector and antiquarian, Cassiano dal Pozzo. These drawings provide the sources for a number of important motifs, which at first sight would not suggest any connection with ancient architecture. But in details they reproduce monuments that correspond closely to works by Borromini. For instance, there is a striking similarity between the lantern of Borromini’s Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza and the ancient temple of Baalbek, a building Borromini could not have known.
  Montano's designs of archaeological reconstructions had a great influence throughout Europe and lasted until the eighteenth century.
caption: Engraving taken from Montano's drawings depicting the reconstruction of the ancient Roman Temple of Vesta in Tivoli.
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