Carlo Maderno

Carlo Maderno designed the facade of St Peter's and extended the basilica into the shape it has, and is blamed for both by people who would have preferred Michelangelo left alone. He came from the lakes north of Milan, one of a large family of masons and stuccoists who worked in Rome, and trained under his uncle Domenico Fontana, the engineer who moved the Vatican obelisk. His facade for Santa Susanna, finished in 1603, is usually taken as the first fully Baroque church front in Rome: the elements crowd towards the centre and the wall gains depth as it goes, which is a different proposition from the flat layered fronts before it. Paul V then gave him St Peter's, with an instruction that changed the building - the Greek cross Michelangelo had planned was to become a Latin cross, on liturgical grounds and to cover the whole footprint of the old basilica. Maderno added three bays and the facade. The consequence, which he foresaw and could not avoid, is that from the piazza the nave hides the dome, so Michelangelo's exterior can only be seen properly from a distance or from behind. He also worked at Sant'Andrea della Valle, whose dome is the second largest in Rome, and on the Palazzo Barberini, where his assistants were his nephew Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the two men who divided Roman architecture between them for the next forty years. He is buried in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, which he also finished. He was made architect of St Peter s in 1603 and held the post until he died. His brother Stefano was the sculptor of the recumbent Saint Cecilia in Trastevere. Bernini finished the Palazzo Barberini after him.

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