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.
Mellini Chapel (Santa Maria del Popolo)
The appearance of the chapel was fundamentally changed when it was rebuilt by Cardinal Giovanni Garzia Mellini in the 1620s in Baroque style. The whole interior was covered with white and gold stuccos, and the vault was decorated with frescos depicting scenes from the life of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino by a Florentine artist, Giovanni da San Giovanni who was paid 130 scudi "as the rest and final installment of payment for the several works done" on 27 October 1627. The main altar was consecrated in 1628. The previous Renaissance tombs were dismantled to make way for the monumental Baroque sepulchres of Cardinal Giovanni Garzia Mellini in the 1630s and Cardinal Savio Mellini in the 1690s.