Giovanni Battista Vaccarini

His work seems then to have been influenced by the school of architecture of Alessandro Specchi, Francesco de Sanctis and Filippo Raguzzini, who tended to reject the classicising of buildings in favour of a much more flamboyant style.

Both Specchi and de Sanctis were closely involved with the design of grand exterior staircases, common to Italian buildings with a second-story piano nobile, and the climate completely negating the requirement for an internal entrance hall on the ground floor in order to provide quick easy access.

The ground floor of the Palazzo degli Elefanti in Catania (already in construction when Vaccarini came to the project) shows the decorated rustication in a 16th-century Sicilian fashion.

The windows on the piano nobile have straight, but broken, pediments with canted sides, a theme commonly reproduced by Vaccarini in ensuing years.

In front of this building, Vaccarini designed a fountain, consisting in an obelisk upon the back of the elephant u Liotru (symbol of Catania), inspiring to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

However, he was not employed only in Sicily, since in 1756 he journeyed to Naples to aid Vanvitelli and Ferdinando Fuga in the construction of the marble Palace of Caserta.