Francesco Borromini

Born Francesco Castelli in 1599 in what's now Swiss Ticino, he came to Rome and studied Michelangelo and ancient ruins with the intensity of the self-taught, building a large library and a structural understanding his painter-trained rivals lacked. He manipulated classical architecture into inventive, idiosyncratic forms - soft lead drawings mapping out geometries and symbolic plans that set him apart from Bernini and Cortona, the other giants of Roman Baroque. But where Bernini played the courtier, Borromini was melancholic and quick-tempered, withdrawing from commissions, his personality constraining what his skill might have claimed. On 2 August 1667, the conflict ended in suicide. His influence stayed narrow for generations - critics like Milizia and Soane dismissed him - but by the late nineteenth century the inventiveness won out, and the strange shapes finally found their admirers.