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.
Santa Maria del Popolo
The decoration of the counterfaçade was part of the Berninian reconstruction of the church in the 17th century. The architecture is simple with a marble frame around the monumental door, a dentilled cornice, a segmental arched pediment and a dedicatory inscription commemorating the thorough rebuilding of the ancient church that Pope Alexander VII initiated as Fabio Chigi, Cardinal Priest of the basilica, and its consecration in 1655 as newly elected Pope: