Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina ( 1525 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work is considered as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.
Nile mosaic of Palestrina
In the 17th century, Palestrina passed to the Barberini family, who between 1624 and 1626 removed most of the mosaic from its setting, without recording the overall composition, and, after further movements and damage, put it on exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini in Palestrina, where it remains. The mosaic was restored and repaired on numerous occasions, but careful watercolors of the sections were made for Cassiano dal Pozzo before the initial restoration in the "opificio" of St. Peter's. Helen Whitehouse's rediscovery of the long-lost watercolors enabled a reconstruction of the surviving segments in a more meaningful way although much remains uncertain about the original composition. The mosaic has been a major feature of the "Museo Nazionale Prenestino" in Palazzo Barberini, Palestrina (not the one in Rome) since 1953