thumb|Painting of Joseph Bonomi the Elder by [[John Francis Rigaud. Housed at Royal Academy of Arts]]
Joseph Bonomi the Elder (19 January 17399 March 1808) was an Italian architect and draughtsman who spent most of his career in England where he became a successful designer of country houses. Bonomi was Robert Adam’s leading draughtsman.
Biography
thumb|right|[[Blickling Park mausoleum|The Blickling pyramid]]
He was born Giuseppe Bonomi in Rome He made his early reputation in Rome before moving to London in 1767 at the invitation of Robert and James Adam, In his early years in England Bonomi also worked as an assistant to Thomas Leverton.
He became a close friend of the painter Angelica Kauffman, whose cousin Rosa Florini he married in 1775. The next year he produced a design for a proposed sacristy for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which may indicate that he visited his native city at around this time. Reynolds resigned his presidency in protest, but was soon re-elected.
He died in London on 9 March 1808, aged 69, and was buried in the Marylebone Cemetery.
- Parts of Towneley Hall near Burnley in Lancashire.
- Barrells Hall, near Ullenhall, Henley in Arden Warwickshire, home of Lady Luxborough and the Newton family of Glencripesdale Estate, Argyll.
- Gallery at Packington Hall, Great Packington, Warwickshire, for Heneage Finch, 4th Earl of Aylesford. replaced by St James's, Spanish Place
- Pyramidal mausoleum at Blickling Park, Norfolk in memory of John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire.
In literature
Bonomi is briefly mentioned in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. In the novel, Robert Ferrars says to Elinor Dashwood (perhaps untruthfully) that his friend Lord Courtland had shown him three house designs by Bonomi and asked him to choose between them, but that Robert had burned them and advised Courtland to build a cottage instead.