While training, he collaborated with Cesare Maccari on dome frescoes at the Sanctuary of Loreto and Genoa's chiesa della Consolazione. Viligiardi's 1890 "Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery" show how heavily influenced he still was by Maccari. His 1891 "Samson as a Prisoner" won a Ministry of Public Education competition for a four-year pension. He presented 39 different designs for the competition to design the facade of Arezzo Cathedral, but that competition was then cancelled - one of them was exhibited at the 1904 St Louis International Exhibition.