After the closing of the exhibition Baroque Rome: Bernini, Borromini and Pietro da Cortona, curated by Marcello Fagilolo and Paolo Potoghesi at the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome (June 15 – October 29, 2006), the model of Borromini’s sundial is now conserved at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science through the generous permission of the Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma.
|
|
[click on images to enlarge] |
TETRACYCLE SUNDIAL |
Wooden Model, 240x98x98 cm |
Reconstruction project: |
Filippo Camerota |
Development and Construction : |
Luise Schnabel, Filippo Camerota |
| Constructed for the exhibit Roma Barocca. Bernini, Borromin, Pietro da Cortona, at the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (15 June – 29 October 2006), by commission of Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma. |
Owner: |
Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’immagine di Roma. |
Monument to the ‘sun’ of the Barberini family and instrument to measure time, the “tetracycle sundial”, as it was called by Athanius Kircher, is one of the first Roman works of the young Francesco Borromini. Constructed in 1628, in collaboration with Agostino Radi, as a “mathematical ornament” for the Quirinal garden, this singular sundial was designed by the mathematician Teodosio Rossi – a disciple of Cristoph Clavius and a correspondent of Tycho Brahe. By the end of the preceding century Teodosio Rossi was renowned at Pontifical Court as one of the finest experts on gnomonics. His gnomonic tables compiled and published in 1593 for the construction of sundials for the latitude of Rome, explicitly cited in Ars Magna by Kircher (1646), contain the technical data also used for the design of the Quirinal sundial that Rossi accurately described in the succeeding Horarium Universale Perpetuum (1637). This work and the Misura e Stima drawn up by the workshop of Carlo Maderno, today conserved at the Archivio di Stato di Roma (Camerale 1, Guistificazioni di Tesoreria, b. 62 fasc. 7, ins.1), are the documents which – along with what remained of the sundial – allowed for the precise reconstruction of the original composition. Already placed atop a fragment of a column from Saint Peter’s, at the base of which Borromini had fitted five “antique” travertine capitals, the sundial was remounted in the 19th century on the present pedestal once belonged to the Cybofamily. Due to the lack of additional attesting documentation, it is possible that the sundial had already been dismantled after the death of Urban VIII with the consequent dispersion of the removable parts. At present, the only surviving elements are the four-sided “stained” marble drum, and the “foot” of marble “saligno” that supports it. At the base of the “foot” is still legible the verse of Virgil, mentioned by Kircher, that recalls bees as “custodians of the doors and observers of the heavens” (Georgics, vv. 164-165), industrious artificers in a hierarchic society that every day like the sun “in the morning they rise towards the door” (vv.185 – 186) and perform without halting their cycle of life.
Three great bees and a radiant sun, the now-lost emblems of the Barberini family, gave form to the four gilded bronze gnomons, indicating the hour for the entire arc of a day, as put forth in the inscription incised along the inferior border of the four quadrants: “RECVRRENTIVM TEMPORVM LEX, A LVCE PRIMA IN VESPERAM, SIC TOTA DECVRRIT DIES, CVRRENS PER ANNI CVLUVM”. On the extreme opposite, along the superior border, a second inscription suggests an emblematic image of the pontiff guided on earth from the divine light: “URBANI VIII BERBERINI, PONT. MAX. AN. SEXTO SALUTIS MDCXXVIII, SUPERNI, LVMINI DVTV”. The sundial was topped by a crown with keys, a specimen of Boromini’s ornamental sculpture of which today remains only a brief note of payment.
