Giovannoni, Muñoz e il "pericolo Borromini" per i giovani architetti italiani

Giovannoni’s architecture is often labelled as Roman barochetto and near to linguistic and spatial themes used by Borromini. In reality, the compositional directions of his projects were more complex and moved by a desire for simplification and contextualization, although there are learned references in his architecture, often as stylistic and formal quotations, which include Bramante, Guarini, Bernini and Borromini, as in the Roman church of Angeli Custodi. Nevertheless, Giovannoni used Borromini’s models with great caution, warning young Italian architects against that imitation as “dangerous”. The essay attempts to reconstruct the parallel threads of the growing interest in Borromini’s work in the early twentieth century and the revival of his solutions in design. This revaluation of the Baroque was facilitated by photographs published by the Associazione Artistica fra i Cultori di Architettura and by contemporary publications dedicated to Baroque repertoires, such as those of Magni, Muñoz and Colasanti, that are real catalogues of details and decorative elements available to designers. This is visible in works by Ponti, Capponi and Sabbatini.