Girolamo Rainaldi

Girolamo Rainaldi (4 May 1570 – 15 July 1655) was an Italian architect who worked mainly in a conservative Mannerist style, often with collaborating architects. He was a successful competitor of Bernini. His son, Carlo Rainaldi, became an even more notable, more fully Baroque architect.

Biography

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

He trained with the architect-engineer Domenico Fontana and collaborated as a junior partner with Giacomo Della Porta,¹ whom he succeeded as the papacy's chief architect, as "officium architecti nobilis fabricae Capitolii Populi Romani".² He completed too Palazzo Albertoni Spinola projected from Giacomo Della Porta.³ He 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.

Rainaldi's most influential single design was the façade of the Chiesa di Gesù e Maria; the project began in 1642, and was not completed before Rainaldi's death. In his official capacity Rainaldi also designed the palazzo to house the Jesuits in the Piazza del Gesù, a Mannerist façade without a trace of Baroque in its details. As the favored architect of Cardinal Pamphili, he temporarily eclipsed Bernini when this cardinal became Pope as Innocent X in 1644 and he became Papal architect of Rome in 1644.⁴