CAETANI, Costantino. - Benedictine, b. at Syracuse in 1560, d. at Rome on 17 Sept. 1650. On 29 Oct. 1586 he entered the monastery of S. Nicola d’Arona in Catania. He was named, by Pope Paul V, abbot of S. Baronato in the diocese of Pistoia and later, by Urban VIII, obtained the priorate of S. Maria Latina in Sicily. Called to Rome, he was appointed custodian of the Vatican Library and assigned to the papal archives. He conceived the foundation of the Collegio gregoriano di S. Benedetto and chose the site in Trastevere near the church of S. Benedetto in Piscinula. Pope Gregory XV, by a bull of 18 May 1621, granted him permission to establish it, and he himself was named its president.
He designed churches in Rome (S. Caterina da Siena a Magnanapoli, S. Maria in Campitelli, S. Agnese in Agone) and in Malta. Yet it is more in his sketches (some of which are in the Vatican Library) than in these sculptures—some of which were executed or supervised by Ercole Ferrata, his master, or his followers—that one must seek the measure of his sensitive and delicate art, with foreshadowings of eighteenth-century grace.