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Francesco Capriani, better known as Francesco da Volterra was an Italian architect particularly important for his role as a mediating figure between Renaissance and Baroque architectural styles. He was an important continuator of the architecture of Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, one of the most important architectural theoreticians of the High Renaissance, and, although his architectural output was small, he was esteemed by architects of his own time. Giacomo della Porta, the designer of the facade of the Gesù in Rome, a touchstone of early Baroque architecture in the city, considered da Volterra to be among the leading architects of the time.

Early career
Francesco da Volterra was born in Volterra in 1535, the son of Giovanni di Capriano and Caterina di Agostino. Francesco married a certain Bernadina sometime presumably shortly before 1559. On 22 May 1559, their son Orazio was baptised at S. Pietro in Vaticano. Francesco must have been living in Rome by this time, as the first record of his professional activity occurs shortly after his son's baptism. Between 27 February and 18 March 1560, Francesco was paid on four occasions for work as a falegname (joiner/carpenter) rendered for the church of S. Macuto, located off piazza Colonna in Rome.

Works for the Gonzaga family
Between 1563/4 and 1570, Francesco da Volterra executed a number of commissions for Cesare I Gonzaga, count of Guastalla. Gonzaga, recently married to Camilla Borromeo (sister of S. Carlo Borromeo), was resident at Rome between 1560 and September 1562. It was presumably in this period that Gonzaga came into contact with da Volterra. Exactly when da Volterra went to Mantua to work for the Gonzaga is not known exactly, but he was certainly there in 1564, when Tomasso Filippi asked Gonzaga to send an architect to Guastalla to assist with the construction of the cathedral of S. Pietro in Guastalla - da Volterra was sent. Da Volterra's activities at Mantua included the construction of a studiolo to display the Duke's enormous collection of paintings, marbles, statues and medals. This studiolo was particularly praised by Giorgio Vasari in the 1566 edition of the Vite. Da Volterra probably also executed a model of the Palazzo del Te at this time.

Da Volterra's principal area of work for the Gonzaga was in several interventions he made in Guastalla, the character of which is now difficult to ascertain due to modifications that occurred after the architect's involvement with works in the city. Guastalla had been acquired by Ferrante I Gonzaga from the Torelli family in 1539. In the early 1540s, when tensions with the neighbouring Farnese family, then occupying the Duchy of Parma were escalating, Ferrante sent the architect Domenico Giunti (1505-1560) to Guastalla to draw up plans for the intensification of fortifications. Drawing on the Renaissance tradition of the ideal city, Giunti radically reconceptualised the layout of the centre of Guastalla, giving it a regularised network of streets, and designing distinct precincts for the ducal family, religious entities, domestic housing and civil administration