CONTINI, GIOVANBATTISTA. – Architect, born in
Rome in 1641 and died there in 1723. Rather than from
his father Francesco, an architect of very limited abil-
ity, he learned from the work of Bernini, whose simplest
manner and most classicizing aspects he continued. He
decorated several chapels in Rome, including that of S.
Rita in S. Agostino and that of S. Pietro d'Alcantara in S.
Maria in Aracoeli; at Montecassino he built the loggia
known as the Paradiso and the library, then the church of
S. Domenico in Ravenna, and in northern Lazio other
religious buildings at Vignanello, Vetralla, etc.,
always in highly restrained forms. His finest work remains
the church of the Stigmata in Rome, which after his death
received its façade from A. Canevari; in it, the affinities
with the spatial interpretation of the late Baroque are
evident.
BBL.: O. Pollak, s. V. in Thieme-Becker, VII, pp. 338-39
(with bibl.); T. H. Fokker, Rome baroque art., Oxford 1935.