The great architects of the age of Baroque came in threes. There were Bernini, Borromini and Pietro da Cortona in Rome; Juvarra, Guarini and Vittone in Turin; Fischer von Erlach, Johann von Hildebrandt and Jakob Prandtauer in Vienna; and, of course, our own Wren, Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh in London. The Trinitarian character of these architects was emphasised by the way each of them encapsulated a particular aspect of architectural genius. In the case of Wren, his work was an expression of mathematical skill; with Hawksmoor, a passionate evocation of the classical past; and in the case of Vanbrugh, ‘storytelling in stone’, as Vaughan Hart describes it in this interesting new biography.

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