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 altarpiece on right side altar was painted in 1659 by Giovanni Maria Morandi, the favourite portraitist of the Chigi family. The artist got the job thanks to the good offices of his previous patron, Duke Francesco Maria Salviati in 1657. A study for the cherubs holding the wreath of roses in the lower left corner is survived in the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig. On the canvas there are no perceptible signs of the Florentine apprenticeship of the painter, it firmly belongs to the artistic world of the Roman seicento dominated by Carlo Maratta, although Emilian influences could also be noticed.