10 Facts About Girolamo Rainaldi

Girolamo Rainaldi was an Italian architect who worked mainly in a conservative Mannerist style, often with collaborating architects.

The son of a painter from Norcia, Rainaldi was born in Rome.

Girolamo Rainaldi trained with the architect-engineer Domenico Fontana and collaborated as a junior partner with Giacomo Della Porta, whom he succeeded as the papacy's chief architect, as "officium architecti nobilis fabricae Capitolii Populi Romani".

Girolamo Rainaldi completed too Palazzo Albertoni Spinola projected from Giacomo Della Porta.

Girolamo Rainaldi was constantly at work on lesser projects such as altars and church furnishings, and with on-going projects of other designers, especially at St Peter's and in completing Michelangelo's project at the Campidoglio with the Palazzo Nuovo discreetly designed to mirror Michelangelo's masterful Palazzo dei Conservatori.

Girolamo Rainaldi designed the Tombs in Santa Cecilia in Trastevere and collaborated in the baroque setting of the gardens of Villa Borghese.

The elder Girolamo Rainaldi was all but house architect for the Farnese family.

Girolamo Rainaldi, who had adapted for the Farnese two monumental antique granite basins as matching fountains in Piazza Farnese in 1626, was taken to Parma by the Farnese to build their town palaces there, and did the vaulting of Santissima Annunziata in that city.

Girolamo Rainaldi was active in Bologna, where he designed the vaulting to cover the vast and ambitious church of San Petronio, and designed the Church of Santa Lucia.

Girolamo Rainaldi is modestly buried next to his father in the Church of Santi Luca e Martina; designed in part by Rainaldi's father, and part by Pietro da Cortona.