Giuseppe Valeriano

(b L'Aquila, Aug 1542; d Naples, 15 July 1596). Italian architect and painter. He was in Rome from the early 1560s and c. 1570 executed the decoration of the Cappella dell'Ascensione, including an altarpiece showing the Ascension, in Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome. His painting style, though provincial, shows the influence of Mannerism and of the successors in Rome of Pellegrino Tibaldi and Michelangelo. Also characteristic is an exaggerated expressiveness and a peculiar imbalance in the depiction of figures and space. He worked partly in collaboration with Scipione Pulzone and Gaspare Celio (1571-1640). Valeriano, however, is more important for his work as an architect. The first buildings that can be securely attributed to him were designed in Spain, where he went in 1573, becoming a member of the Jesuit Order there in 1574. These included the church in Villagarc?a de Campos and projects for the Jesuits at Seville, Granada, C?rdoba, M?laga and Trigueros (all unexecuted or only partially executed). He came into contact with Juan de Herrera, whose work on the Escorial clearly influenced him in his own work on the Collegio Romano in Rome after he returned to Italy in 1580. Despite the traditional attribution to Bartolomeo Ammanati, the design of the Collegio Romano, founded by Pope Gregory XIII, is now regarded as Valeriano's, in collaboration with a team that included Giacomo della Porta. In 1584 Valeriano produced plans for the new building of the Collegio Massimo (now the University), Naples, and started work there on his masterpiece, the Ges? Nuovo, the largest Jesuit church in southern Italy. The building has a basically centralized plan, with a dome over the crossing, tunnel-vaulted transepts and cupolas over the corner chapels; the longitudinal axis was emphasized by a one-bay extension of the nave on both entrance and choir sides. Originally painted white, with features picked out in piperno, the local volcanic stone, they have since been covered in rich marble. His Chiesa del Ges? (begun 1589), Genoa, has a similar plan, and the wall surfaces of its spacious interior are articulated with pilasters. In 1591 Valeriano worked on the enlargement of the Michaelskirche, Munich, and in 1592 he produced plans for Jesuit buildings in Lisbon, Malta, L'Aquila, Marsala and Palermo.

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