Domenico Fontana

Architect, born in Melide, S Switzerland (formerly Italy). He was papal architect in Rome, employed on the Lateran Palace, the Vatican Library, and St Peter's dome. He was afterwards royal architect in Naples.

Domenico Fontana (1543 – 1607) was a Swiss architect of the late Renaissance.

He was born at Melide on the Lake Lugano and died at Naples. He won the confidence of Cardinal Montalto, later Pope Sixtus V, who entrusted him in 1584 with the erection of the Cappella del Presepio (Chapel of the Manger) in Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, a powerful domical building over a Greek cross.

For the same patron, he constructed the Palazzo Montalto near Santa Maria Maggiore, with its skilful distribution of masses and tied decorative scheme of reliefs and festoons, impressive because of the dexterity with which the artist adapted the plan to the site at his disposal.

Of more importance were the alterations he made in Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (c.1586), where he introduced into the loggia of the north facade an imposing double arcade of wide span and ample sweep, and probably added the two-story portico the Scala Santa. This predilection for arcades as essential features of an architectural scheme was brought out in the fountains designed by Domenico and his brother Giovanni, e.g.

Among profane buildings his strong restrained style, with its suggestion of the School of Vignola, is best exemplified in the Lateran Palace (begun in 1586), in which the vigorous application of sound structural principles and a power of co-ordination are undeniable, but also the utter lack of imagination and barren monotony of style.

Fontana also designed the transverse arms separating the courts of the Vatican.

He gives a detailed account of it in Della transportatione dell'obelisco Vaticano e delle fabriche di Sisto V (Rome, 1590) .

Fontana also used his knowledge of statics, which aroused universal astonishment at the time, in the erection of three other ancient obelisks on the Piazza del Popolo, Piazza di S.

After his patron's death, he continued for some time in the service of his successor, Pope Clement VIII. Soon, however, dissatisfaction with his style, envy, and the charge that he had misappropriated public moneys, drove him to Naples where, in addition to designing canals, he erected the Palazzo Reale.

Domenico's brother Giovanni (b.