Borromini's Helix

a mannerist morning in Rome

Michelangelo's last work before his death is a truly bizarre piece of architecture. The Porta Pia, one of the ancient city gates of Rome, stands on the threshhold of the old Via Nomentana that stretches far out into the countryside. It looms over the asphalt, striped with esoteric patterns intended to complicate the life of passing pedestrians, a monument that is either charming, weird or perhaps even foreboding. Some people call it a stage-set for urban life, a backdrop for the miniature theatrum mundi that is Rome or any city.

Other people consider its details, its grotesque masks, broken pediments and monstrous triglyphs the licentious work of a laughing, aged madman. I would normally agree, tending towards the canonical in my taste, but today I didn't. To me, it seemed blocky and muscularly Tuscan, its eccentricities the translation of heavy fortress portals into heavier Doric. It seems less a joke than a puzzle; it is too powerful to be humorous. The grotesque mask over the gate seems less a smile than a grimace, the triumph of the papal escucheon above over the wincing enemies of Christendom, consecrated by the blood of the fallen Papal zouaves slain here in 1870 in their last defense. The gate's surreal details, like those of Ledoux's bunker-like neoclassical customs houses, are not meant to elicit a smile but simply impress the traveller with its power, to overwhealm and disorient. To lose oneself in that domination is marvelous, at least for a little while.

My friend V., usually a free spirit, wasn't convinced. She thought the peculiar deviations of the old master seemed illogical, neither to tell a story or highlight some marvelous structural crescendo. It was antinomian, though she didn't use that word. And perhaps she was right; the mannerist Michelangelo had almost broken every rule in his final joke on earth, leaving us no references to grasp as we wondered at this peculiar monument. Whether it is a monument to humorous strangeness or mystical strangeness or dominating strangeness, it still remains unsettling.

Professor D., dismissing the class, pointed us down the Via XX Settembre to San Carlino, a monument to an another erratic genius, the Baroque suicide Borromini. The rest of the group trailed off, but I tried to wave a few of us over across the street. V. was the only one interested, however, and so we stepped into the glowing world of curves and countercurves that Bernini's brooding rival had created in a space smaller than one of the crossing-piers of St. Peter's. The coffering of the illusionistic oval dome rising to the Holy Ghost enclosed in a gilded triangle, and that spirit seemed to suffuse the luminous white interior, full of effortless grace and light. The inverted volutes, peculiar details and turning, edgeless corners seemed to make sense, to have a mathematical, even Pythagorean rightness about them for all their flamboyant drama.

We wandered back into the sacristy and out into the tiny, famous little cloister that Borromini had done first and caused the Trinitarian monks to invite him back for more of the same. V. was in heaven. Her taste is simple and logical, vernacular timelessness to my thirst for Tridentine drama and mystical gilt. She'd probably call it the Pilgrim Church and I'd say it was Church Militant, not that either perspective is wrong. But it means we look at the world in different ways. Yet we were both entranced by the tiny, quiet cloister, with its pure whiteness, its wrought-iron wellhead, its witty balustrades and subtle curving corners. Overhead, a sliver of the cupola was outlined against the pure cool blue sky. The only ornament was simple banding, spiced with quiet Borromenian dashes of magic like the semi-Gothic faceted capitals.

After all, it was a wondrous space both catholic and Catholic.

Then things started getting mannerist on us, and I don't mean in the architectural sense. I found a half-open doorway. I had to explore. Ever since my friend Dan found St. Dominic's cell at Santa Sabina after some sub rosa exploring (after walking in on someone's confession), I've been trying to top him in the random door-opening sweepstakes. So, pressed by curiosity, I slowly and quietly stepped up the first couple of treads, putting my finger to my lips and signalling V. to come along.

She was skeptical, cautiously murmuring a warning. This struck me as amusing, as V., well, she has a peculiar way of plunging into the thick of things and thriving. Walking through Roman traffic with her head held high, strolling to the Porziuncola in Assisi barefoot at five in the morning in the middle of a power failure, or ignoring a police barricade to get to the bottom of whatever protest of the day is crowding the Piazza Venezia. She makes it work. The rest of us simply shrug it off, though I prefer slightly less exciting ways of living life. But that's just me.

But you'd think a staircase and a few old (and seemingly invisible) friars would be nothing for her. For timid me, maybe, but today was a mannerist day and everything was turned around. I pressed forward and she followed, tenatively at first, and then eager to explore. It was strange and dreamlike as we wound up the corkscrew steps, passing through regions of chiaroscuro alternating with reflected light on the bare white plaster. There was no central pillar on the narrow spiral, the edge undulating like a Gaudi fantasy. V. was amazed, gasping out, "It's like a DNA helix!"

Bright, anonymous, tile-floored hallways floated past us through open doors, the two stories of monastic cells that housed the Trinitarian friars whose church this was. Finally, we came to a curve shrouded in darkness, and a tiny wooden door propped shut with a stanchion. I rummaged around and slowly slid the prop off its hook, and V. sounded skeptical again.

She wasn't when I opened the door. We were lost in the light, and found ourselves on a terrace high above the serene cloister. Beautiful orange trees stood below bathed in sunlight, ringed by the ashen-orange tile roofs of an unrestored wing of the monastery, while right above us stood Borromini's extraordinary and almost unknown lantern, spinning up to its orb and cross with a helicoid curve identical to the weightless stair we had just ascended.

We were there for maybe two minutes, but I will never forget the view.

We cautiously made our way back down, stole out the hallway--after I considered making another illegal detour, but decided against it--and stepped back into the crowded world of the Via XX Settembre. The Porta Pia seemed to hover suspended in the distance like a flying mountain. To me, coming out of that sleepy monastic dreamworld, this surreal gate with its massive bulk suspended on the horizon seemed supremely right. Michelangelo of course had never met Borromini, who would create his marvels decades after the Tuscan's death, and Borromini's license and frantic depression was different from the Florentine sculptor's lethargic melancholy and mannerism. But still, the two harmonized with marvelous concordance.

V. is still unsure about the Porta Pia. I can't blame her. Nonetheless, for her part, she thinks San Carlino is her favorite Baroque church. I couldn't agree more. Now, the only problem is at least five of my friends and a professor want to check out those stairs and I imagine it'll be harder to sneak past the Trinitarians with those sorts of numbers.