Background
Giuseppi Bonomi was born at Rome, Italy on the 19th of January 1739.
Giuseppi Bonomi was born at Rome, Italy on the 19th of January 1739.
He was educated at the Collegio Romano and then studied architecture with Girolamo Teodoli.
After attaining a considerable reputation in Italy, Bonomi came in 1767 to England, and finally settled in practice there. He was the innocent cause of the retirement of Sir Joshua Reynolds from the presidency of the Royal Academy. Sir Joshua wished him to become a full Academician, regarding him as a fitting occupant of the then vacant chair of perspective. But the majority of the Academicians were opposed to this suggestion, and Bonomi was elected an associate only, and that merely by the president's casting vote. Bonomi was largely responsible for the revival of classical architecture in England. His most famous work was the Italian villa at Roseneath, Dumbartonshire, designed for the duke of Argyll. He died in London on the 9th of March 1808.
In 1789, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.
He married Rosa Florini in 1775. His younger son, Giuseppi Bonomi the Younger (1796 - 1878), studied art in London at the Royal Academy, and became a sculptor, but is best known as an illustrator of the leading Egyptological publications of his day. From 1824 to 1832 he was in Egypt, making drawings of the monuments in the company of Burton, Lane and Wilkinson. In 1833 he visited the rnosque of Omar, returning with detailed drawings, and from 1842 to 1844 was again in Egypt, attached to the Prussian government exploration expedition under Lepsius. He assisted in the arrangement of the Egyptian court at the Crystal Palace in 1853, and in 1861 was appointed curator of the Soane Museum. He died on the 3rd of March 1878.
Giuseppi Bonomi the Elder's another son Ignatius Bonomi (1787–1870), was also an architect.