The chapel’s main entry-points take the Baroque passion for dramatic lighting to a whole new level. Guarini shifted the original floor plan to squeeze three circular vestibules around the outside. While one leads to the ducal palace, the others connect to the cathedral via stairways. By shrouding the stairs in darkness, Guarini forced pilgrims to act out their faith by ascending almost blindly. Emerging from the blackness, they would finally step amongst the golden stars circling the Shroud.
Stark black-and-white marble echoes the theme of light and dark, designed to evoke the suffering represented by the shroud. Instead of a hemisphere,Guarini presents a whole series of shapes piled on top of each other, culminating in what might be the world’s strangest dome. Amongst the many oddities of the chapel’s middle zone, Guarini created two kinds of surfaces: one with a complex network of stars and hexagons, and the other with crosses distorted to look like they are being stretched into a curve. The latter configuration was only possible with Guarini’s work in advanced geometry.
The “dome” is unlike any other structure in the world: six levels of hexagons, each composed of six arches, are stacked at alternating angles. By manipulating the proportions of each layer, Guarini created the illusion of a tunnel extending far beyond the building’s size. He enhanced the effect by using soft greys which mimic colors blurring in the distance, a trick he likely picked up from ancient Greek theories about perception.
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