After taking Castel Bolognese he returned to Rome in June, to take part in the Franco-Spanish intrigues for the partition of Naples.
The Madonna della Ghiara, built in 1597 in the form of a Greek cross, and restored in 1900, is beautifully proportioned and finely decorated in stucco and with frescoes of the Bolognese school of the early 17th century.
Contemporary with these three men was Ulysses Aldrovandus, a Bolognese, who wrote an Historia Naturalium in sixteen folio volumes, most of which were not printed till after his death in 1605; but those on birds appeared between 1599 and 1603.
Previously the several districts formally recognized were Latium, the Marittima (or sea-board) and Campagna, the patrimony of Saint Peter, the duchy of Castro, the Orvietano, the Sabina, Umbria, the Perugino, the March of Ancona, Romagna, the Bolognese, the Ferrarese, and the duchies of Benevento and of Pontecorvo.
He studied also the Bolognese painters and Giovanni Barbieri, and formed for himself a style with very little express mannerism, partly resembling that of Maratta.