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
The monument of a Prussian painter, Franz Ludwig Catel was erected by the pillar between the Della Rovere and Cybo Chapels. Catel was a successful landscape and genre painter who spent most of his career in Rome. He lived nearby in Piazza di Spagna where his home became a favourite meeting place for young artists. He died in 1856 at the age of 78 years and left his estate to a foundation which he had set up to help young German and Italian artists in the city. His monument was designed by a fellow German sculptor, Julius Troschel. The white marble Neo-Classical aedicula is decorated with a frieze of garlands and two wreathes and it is crowned by a pediment and a cross. The realistic bust of the deceased is set in a niche in the middle. The epitaph mentions his noble intention to leave most of his fortune to the artists in need.