ABSTRACT
Francesco Borromini's church Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, built in Rome in 1640, reaches far beyond the classical vocabulary and formalist traditions of Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The church's centrally-planned design, with its exquisite entablatures and Corinthian-crowned pilasters, echoes the ornate elegance of the seventeenth century. Sant'Ivo's most prominent feature is its dome. With its six lobes that extend like the petals of a flower, it rises from a drum, the design of which is a regular hexagram. The application of this geometry in the design of the drum appears both aesthetically and symbolically inconsonant with the scope of Roman Catholic architectural tradition. However, further scrutiny of the religious and philosophical undercurrents of Borromini's time reveals a logical coherence to this plan. The academic relationship between Borromini and the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher provides evidence for the influence of arcane religious syncretism, and specifically the study of the Kabbalah as a theological foundation for the form of the church. The correlation between the linguistic structure of scripture and the architectural vocabulary of the church is at the root of discovering the meaning of Sant'Ivo's seemingly anomalous design.
