Borromini

In Rome, he visited San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane: a chapel designed by Francesco Borromini that’s one of the prizes of Baroque architecture, topped by an oval dome.

They had the can-you-top-this confidence of an artist who saw Borromini as his peer, but they were more inviting than Serra’s previous steel works, beckoning you to explore their warmly patinated expanses.

They range from Francesco Borromini of Rome, who lived in the more conventional Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s shadow during the 17th century and eventually impaled himself on a saber; to Starr Gideon Kempf, who made a kinetic sculpture garden in Colorado Springs before putting a gun to his head in 1995.

Mayor once wrote, the family was “heir to all the Baroque, all that Bernini and Borromini had dreamed but had had to leave undone.”

This was designed by Francesco Borromini, the melancholic 17th-century genius whom Gehry often credits as an inspiration.