Pellegrino Tibaldi came from a northern Italian family of artists: his father and his two brothers were also painters. After training under his father, he moved to Rome around 1547, where he assisted Perino del Vega in painting the apartment of Pope Paul III in the Castel Sant'Angelo. After del Vega's death, he finished this commission independently. After completing several commissions in the Vatican and in Roman churches, Tibaldi was admitted to the Roman painters' guild in 1550. In the 1550s, he accepted commissions in Bologna, Loreto and Ancona. In the late 1550s, Tibaldi first worked as an architect in Ancona, and in 1561, he is first officially referred to as an architect in a document. In Ancona, he also met Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who commissioned him for several building projects in the Archdiocese of Milan. In 1567, Tibaldi was appointed architect of the Milan Cathedral. In addition to numerous projects in the Milan Cathedral, Tibaldi designed the Jesuit church of San Fedele in Milan. Other churches and palazzi in Milan followed. After the death of his patron Borromeo in 1584 and after several attempts by his competitors to prove him incompetent, Tibaldi followed a call to Madrid. There, he contributed to the pictorial decoration of the Escorial. Between 1587 and 1591, he also wrote an architectural treatise, only two copies of which have survived. Shortly before his death in 1596, Tibaldi returned to Milan. Pellegrino Tibaldi's designs were influential in shaping the style of Lombard architecture.