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Where did Alessandro Galilei work from 1710 to 1717?
Alessandro Galilei Alessandro Maria Gaetano Galilei ( 25 August 1691 – 21 December 1737 ) was an Italian mathematician , architect and theorist , a member of the same patrician family of Galileo . Biography . Born in Florence , he received architectural and engineering training from Antonio Maria Ferri , an outstanding figure of the Accademia dei Nobili , who lectured and wrote a treatise on perspective , fortifications and artillery . With him young Galilei worked on the study of building techniques , stereometry , hydraulics . Visiting English milords were impressed with the classicism of his early designs , and he was invited by a party of English to London in 1714 . There he participated in a variety of architectural projects , most notably collaborating with the civic engineer Nicholas Dubois . The only other notable Italian architect in London at the time was Giacomo Leoni . The two architects shared a classicising bent that appealed to the English but was at odds with current Baroque architectural practice in Italy . Nevertheless , aside from a funerary monument , no major commissions were forthcoming . In 1718 , Robert , Viscount Molesworth employed Galilei in Ireland . There , when William Conolly , Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and the richest man in Ireland was just beginning to build Castletown House , near Dublin in County Kildare , he met Galilei . Galilei designed the façade of the main block of Castletown , the grandest Palladian house in Ireland , but returned to Italy in 1719 and was not associated with the actual construction of the house , which was begun in 1722 and carried through by the young Anglo-Irish architect Edward Lovett Pearce , who met Galilei in Florence while he was making drawings of Palladios villas on his tour of Italy . and would introduce Neo-Palladian architecture in Ireland . A portrait of Galilei by Giuseppe Berti , signed and dated 1735 , has recently been purchased for Castletown House . Once more in Florence after 1719 , Galilei was appointed Ingegnere delle fortezze e fabbriche di corte ( Engineer of court buildings and fortresses ) of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany , Cosimo III and Gian Gastone de Medici , last of the Medici grand dukes , neither of whom , however , could provide him with architectural projects suited to his talents . Galileis projects during this period included a renovation of the choir of Cortona Cathedral that featured a severely classical triumphal arch motif , additions to the Villa Venuti , at Catrosse , near Cortona , for Domenico Girolamo Venuti , and a design ( 1724 ) for the oratory of the Church of the Madonna del Vivaio ( since rebuilt ) in Scarperia , Tuscany . In 1730 the Florentine patrician Lorenzo Corsini was elected as Pope Clement XII and called Galilei to Rome in 1731 to build his familys chapel , the Cappella Corsini in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano ( completed 1732 ) . During the next six years , Galilei created all of his most notable works , which were executed in a Classical , anti-Baroque style . The most notable of these was the façade of San Giovanni in Laterano , a commission awarded after a competition ( 1733–1736 ) . The monumental severity and palace character of the façade caused a scandal in Roman artistic circles but was admired later in the century by French and British neoclassicists . Galilei also built the more conventionally Baroque façade for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini ( 1734 ) , where the cornice between lower and upper stages breaks forward at center and ends , and niches between engaged Corinthian columns and sculptural detail all provide the Baroque light-and-shade . He died in Rome . External links . - Catholic Encyclopedia : Alessandro Galilei - Castletown House : introduction - Wall monument to Alessandro Galilei , Santa Croce , Florence ( photograph ) Death date in inscription . - Rome ArtLover : the façade of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini ( photographs )