Stemmi

1704

Moves to Rome

He moves to Rome and studies architecture with Carlo and Francesco Fontana; until then he had taught himself architecture from books alone, such as those by Vitruvius and Vignola.

c. 1704

The Ruffo patrons and the meeting with Carlo Fontana

Under the protection of influential churchmen of the Ruffo family, who commissioned his father's workshop, he lives in Rome as a guest of the Passalacqua family in a district populated mostly by natives of Messina. With the help of Monsignor Tommaso Ruffo he soon meets Carlo Fontana, the most significant architect and an authoritative teacher of architecture in Rome, while, by other accounts, he studies architecture itself from the treatises of Vitruvius, Vignola and Andrea Pozzo, at first without building practice.

1705

Wins the Concorso Clementino

Enters the Clementine competition of the Academy of St Luke with a design for a “villa for three persons” and wins.

1714

Moves to Turin as first civil architect

He follows Victor Amadeus II to Turin: the king first employs him in a scenographic project, then raises him to the position of first civil architect (primo architetto civile). There he will build the west wing of the Palazzo Madama, the palace of the Duke of Aosta, the Palazzo Birago and much more.

1735

Moves to Madrid for the Royal Palace

By April he has moved to Madrid and begins planning the new royal palace; the surviving plans would have created a structure larger than the present one, with ample gardens. The linear façade has a formal rigidity lacking in some of his other works.

31 January 1736

Death in Madrid

Dies in Madrid after about ten months of intense work (by other accounts, less than nine months after arriving in Spain): officially of pneumonia, but, according to Gaburri, not without suspicion of poison.