VALADIER, GIUSEPPE. - Architect b. in Rome on 14 April 1762 and d. there on 1 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 of the SS. Palazzi, he undertook a journey through northern Italy and went as far as Marseille. In 1784 he was in Split for the interior arrangement of the cathedral, and the following year he was recalled to Rome, where he was soon appointed (1786) director of the Calcografia camerale and of the Fabbrica di S. Pietro. Meanwhile, in his capacity as cameral architect, he made numerous journeys through the Papal States. It was in this period (1786-91) that V. took an interest in the reconstruction of the dome of the cathedral of Rimini and of the dilapidated cathedral of Urbino, giving the latter building a distinctly Palladian stamp. In 1795 he undertook the construction of the new collegiate church of S. Lorenzo di Monte Sanpietrangelo (Fermo).
Furthermore, while he was planning and directing works in the Pontine marshes and at Terracina, in 1800 he supplied designs and directed the construction of a theater for Count Zagnani of Bologna; in 1804 he led excavations around the Pantheon; in 1805 he restored Ponte Milvio and made the 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. He likewise restored the church of the Suffragio at L'Aquila, while in 1806 he erected, echoing once again Palladian forms, the facade of the church of S. Pantaleo in Rome. In 1809 he undertook the works that were to lead to the arrangement of Piazza del Popolo and the Pincio and that lasted until after 1820, with the decisive intervention, in 1813, of the French architect L. M. Berthault.
While thus engaged, V. built a chapel in Palazzo Braschi, rebuilt the cathedral of Caprarola, which had been destroyed by fire in 1819, supplied the designs for the church of S. Cristina at Cesena and those for the lantern of the Porto di Ripagrande in Rome, in which city he also worked in S. Andrea delle Fratte, rebuilt the Teatro Valle, built the new facade of the Calcografia camerale and the Villa Poniatowski on the Via Flaminia, and carried on a very remarkable activity as a restorer of ancient buildings, conducting works memorable for their consolidation (the Colosseum and the Arch of Titus). In those years V. also carried out other minor works of building and town-planning arrangement, some of which were subsequently implemented taking their cue from his ideas, so that V.'s personality as a builder and town-planner appears very remarkable and perhaps greater than his personality as an architect.
As such, rather than linking himself to the group of Roman neoclassical architects, he appears in direct cultural relationship with the neo-Palladians of the Veneto, among whom are Quarenghi and Piranesi. Hence his characteristic stance, by virtue of which certain aspects of V.'s neo-
Palladian architectures (the church of S. Pantaleo and that of S. Rocco on 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).
In other works of his, however, V. clearly shows that he had matured the neoclassical experience, especially in the field of building and in that of a specifically archaeological culture understood in the modern sense. His scrupulousness as a restorer bears witness to this. - See pl. LXXXVIII.
Bibliography3 works
Emilio Lavagnino