DELLA GRECA. - Two architects of this name were active in Rome in the seventeenth century.
VINCENZO, b. at Palermo, d. after 1652. Having come to Rome in 1616, he was first a pupil of G. B. Montano and then of Maderno, whom he succeeded in the construction of the Palazzo Chigi; the completion of the courtyard and the grand staircase are attributed to him. In 1651 he built the church of S. Gajo, which stood on the line of the present-day via XX Settembre (demolished in 1885), and in 1652 the facade of SS. Domenico e Sisto, his principal work, still following Renaissance schemes, but preceded by a pincer-shaped flight of steps that, in the suppleness of its lines, seems to anticipate the eighteenth century.
FELICE, son of the preceding, b. at Rome c. 1626, d. there after 1677. After having been his father's assistant in the courtyard of the Palazzo Chigi, he entered in 1655 the service of the Camera Apostolica, where he is remembered only as a maker of models and as a measurer of buildings. Of him only the facade of the church of the Angelo Custode is known.
Mario Zocca