Santa Maria del Popolo
The architect or architects of this innovative project remain unknown due to a lack of contemporary sources. Giorgio Vasari in his "Lives" attributed all the important papal projects in Rome during Sixtus IV to a Florentine, Baccio Pontelli including the basilica and monastery of Santa Maria del Popolo. Modern researchers deemed this claim highly dubious and proposed other names among them Andrea Bregno, a Lombard sculptor and architect whose workshop certainly received important commissions in the basilica. The fundamental differences between the façade and the interior suggest that maybe more than one architect was working on the building.
Monuments in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo
A small white marble memorial stele on the same pillar was erected for Teresa Olivi Benvenuti, a woman from Chioggia and granddaughter of the naturalist, Giuseppe Olivi. She died in 1856 at the age of 40 years. Her delicate relief portrait in profile above the funerary inscription is surrounded by an ouroboros. The third monument on the same pillar is a memorial stele of Maria Anna de Magistris (1856).