Giuseppe Valadier — Architect. Born in Rome on 14 April 1762; died there on 10 February 1839.
His father, an engraver and metal founder, was his first teacher; he then studied at the Accademia di S. Luca. In 1781, having been appointed architect to the Papal Palaces, he undertook a journey through northern Italy and even reached Marseilles. In 1784 he was at Spoleto for the internal arrangement of the cathedral; the following year he was recalled to Rome, where he was soon appointed (1786) director of the Cameral Engraving Works and of the Fabbrica di S. Pietro. Meanwhile, in his capacity as Cameral Architect, he made numerous journeys through the Papal States. It was during this period (1786–91) that Valadier concerned himself with the reconstruction of the dome of the cathedral of Rimini and of the unstable cathedral of Urbino, giving the latter building a distinctly Palladian stamp. In 1795 he began the construction of the new collegiate church of S. Lorenzo at Monte San Pietrangeli (Fermo).
Moreover, while designing and directing works in the Pontine Marshes and at Terracina, in 1800 he provided designs and directed the construction of a theatre for Count Zagnani of Bologna; in 1804 he directed excavations around the Pantheon; in 1805 he restored Ponte Milvio and drew up plans for a large public garden that was to extend between the Via Flaminia and the Tiber, from the height of Piazza del Popolo to Ponte Milvio itself. Likewise, he restored the church of the Suffragio at L’Aquila, while in 1806 he erected—once again echoing Palladian forms—the façade of the church of S. Pantaleo in Rome. In 1809 he began the works that were to lead to the arrangement of Piazza del Popolo and the Pincio, which lasted until after 1820, with the decisive intervention in 1813 of the French architect L. M. Berthault.
While thus engaged, Valadier built a chapel in Palazzo Braschi, rebuilt the cathedral of Caprarola after its destruction by fire in 1819, provided designs for the church of S. Cristina in Cesena and for the lantern of the Porto di Ripagrande in Rome, and in that city also worked on S. Andrea delle Fratte, rebuilt the Teatro Valle, constructed the new façade of the Cameral Engraving Works and the Villa Poniatowski on the Via Flaminia, and carried out a most noteworthy activity as a restorer of ancient buildings, conducting memorable works for their consolidation (the Colosseum and the Arch of Titus). In those years Valadier also executed other minor works for architectural and urban arrangements, some of which were subsequently carried out taking their cue from his ideas, so much so that the personality of Valadier as a builder and urban planner appears most remarkable and perhaps even greater than that of him as an architect.
As such, rather than linking himself to the group of Roman Neoclassical architects, he appears in direct cultural rapport with the Neopalladians of the Veneto, among whom were Quarenghi and Piranesi. Hence his characteristic stance, by which certain aspects of Valadier’s Neopalladian architecture (the church of S. Pantaleo and that of S. Rocco in Via Ripetta in Rome, or the interior of the cathedral of Urbino) may even appear as anticipations of the attitudes proper to the Purists (v. PURISMO).
Nevertheless, in other works Valadier clearly demonstrates that he had matured Neoclassical experience, above all in the field of building and in that of archaeology understood in a modern sense. Of this his scrupulousness as a restorer bears witness. — See pl. LXXXVIII.