Tiberio Crispo

Who was Tiberio Crispo?

Tiberio Crispo was a cardinal-nephew of Pope Paul III, raised to the cardinalate on December 19, 1544, and the bishop of Sessa Aurunca. He was possibly an illegitimate son of Paul III; Costanza Farnese and Ranuccio Farnese, the two undisputed legitimate children of Paul III, were born before his election as pope. Like other cardinal-nephews, Crispo was the castellan of Castel Sant'Angelo.

Crispo was deacon of S. Agata de' Goti from 1545 to 1551 and continued to hold the deaconry pro illa vice until 1562.

As papal legate to Perugia, Crispo was a "driving force behind the architectural renewal of the city". For example, in 1547 Crispo commissioned Galeazzo Alessi for the construction of Santa Maria del Popolo to replace a church demolished by the construction of the Via Nuova. He also commissioned a palace in Bolsena that bears his name, Palazzo di Tiberio Crispo, which was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger circa 1543; after the death of Sangallo in 1546, Raffaello da Montelupo was called in to finish the palace, which remained incomplete, however, after the deaths of both Crispo and Raffaello in 1566.