He was born in Rome to a French baker and confectioner, Robert Venouot or Vénevot,[1] whose name was Italianized to Benevolo.
He later assumed posts as maestro di cappella at Santa Maria in Trastevere (from 1624), Santo Spirito in Sassia (from 1630), and his old church San Luigi dei Francesi (from 1638).
Benevoli returned to Rome (1646), where he remained for the rest of his life as choirmaster at both Santa Maria Maggiore and the Cappella Giulia of St. Peter's Basilica.
Much of his fame as a composer has rested largely on his supposed composition of the fifty-three part Missa Salisburgensis, which musicologists long believed was written by Benevoli in Salzburg Cathedral in 1628.
Nevertheless, external and internal evidence subsequently demonstrated that the Mass is in fact the work of composer Heinrich Ignaz Biber, and that it dates not from 1628 but from 1682.