Giacomo Barozzi, called Giacomo da Vignola, had worked from 1541 to 1543 as an architect for the French court at the Chateau de Fontainebleau, where he probably met his fellow Bolognese, the architect Sebastiano Serlio and the painter Primaticcio.

Barozzi has returned to Italy and begun to execute his own Mannerist designs, including that for the Palazzo Bocchi in Bologna, on which construction begins in 1545.