He gained his first experience alongside Poletti, from whose cold academicism he soon managed to free himself, evolving slowly and belatedly with respect to the times. His early works are in the provinces: at Ceprano, where he built a small palace for Monsignor Francesco Ferrari and redesigned the façade of the collegiate church; at Viterbo, where he erected the theatre; at Orvieto, where he likewise built the theatre; and at Gualdo Tadino, where he provided the design for the remodelling of the interior of the Duomo. All these buildings were executed with academic precision, as was the case with the work he carried out in Rome on Porta San Pancrazio, which had been severely damaged in the bombardments of 1849.
V. appears more accomplished and freer in the diminutive sanctuary of the Madonna dell’Archetto (1851) in the street of the same name, also in Rome, where a short time later he raised what may perhaps be considered his masterpiece: the external façade of Porta Pia. A solid architecture constructed with fine linearity of form and a just balance of proportions, which would gain much in visual impact if the street level towards the piazza were lowered, as it originally was, by at least one metre. Other Roman works by him include the buildings forming the entrance to the Verano cemetery, the high altar of San Pietro in Vincoli, the confessio of Santa Maria Maggiore, the restoration of the basilicas of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura and San Lorenzo in Damaso, the remodelling in Romanesque-Gothic forms of the little church of San Tommaso da Canterbury (formerly in the Trinità dei Soccorsi in Piazzetta della Rota), the continuation of the works on San Paolo after Poletti’s death, as well as the commencement of the extensive restorations in the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano commissioned by Pius IX, of which V. was the favoured architect, though largely executed during the pontificate of Leo XIII.
VESPIGNANI, FRANCESCO, architect, son of the preceding, b. in Rome in 1842, d. there in 1899. A pupil and assistant of his father, in 1827 he built in vaguely Bramantesque forms the church and convent of the Sacred Heart in Via Marsala.
A few years later, around 1890, alongside Father Hildebrand de Hemptinne, he undertook the construction in Lombard-influenced forms of the church and college of Sant’Anselmo on the Aventine.