DELLA PORTA, GIACOMO. – Born probably in Lombardy ca. 1540 and died in Rome in 1604. After an early period of activity in Genoa, where the church of the Santissima Annunziata is attributed to him, he was continuously active in Rome from 1573, when he succeeded Vignola in the construction of the Gesù, modifying its design and making it the prototype of Counter-Reformation architecture. He replicated the same model on a smaller scale at S. Maria dei Monti (1584), while departing from it in other works: the façade of S. Luigi dei Francesi (before 1583), S. Paolo alle Tre Fontane (1590), and the interior of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where Sangallo’s arrangement is taken up, abandoning Michelangelo’s design.
He also succeeded Vignola as architect of the Vatican works, in which, however, he did not depart from the Michelangelesque conception: under Gregory XIII he erected the chapel named after the Pontiff; and he continued the works under Sixtus V, with Domenico Fontana at his side, with whom he vaulted the dome, altering the master’s design only slightly. Confirmed in his position by Clement VIII, he executed for the Pope the Clementine Chapel, symmetrical to the Gregorian Chapel, and the new confessio, likewise called Clementine.
He also took part in the construction of S. Atanasio dei Greci and probably also of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti and S. Maria in Vallicella, and rebuilt the transept of S. Giovanni in Laterano. Among the civil buildings he erected, those for the Aldobrandini stand out: the palace in Piazza Colonna (later Chigi) and the villa at Frascati, both left unfinished at his death. He is also responsible for the type of the sixteenth-century fountain in Rome, first implemented in Piazza del Pantheon (1575).