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Abstract: Tommaso Laureti’s training has been totally obscure until now. He was born in Palermo in 1530, moved to Rome while very young and was referred to by Vasari as a student of Sebastiano del Piombo. He was seventeen when his teacher died in 1547 and from this date until 1562, there are no records of his activity. In 1562 at the age of thirty-two, he was hired to paint a perspective decoration in the great hall of Palazzo Vizzani in Bologna and the following year he received the prestigious commission to design a fountain for piazza Maggiore in the same city. Various decorative motifs that Laureti used both for the rendition in Palazzo Vizzani and the architectural perspective of the Fontana Vecchia display a close resemblance to the work of Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, such as the courtyard of Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola and the perspective on the walls of the Jupiter Hall. In addition to his ability with perspective, his knowledge of hydraulics may be evidence of his close ties to Vignola, from whom he had had the opportunity to learn while assisting in the construction of the conduits for the public fountain and the nymphaeum at Villa Giulia in Rome. The Vizzanis had probably originally commissioned Vignola to execute the illusionistic ceiling perspectives, but at the time he was busy working in Caprarola and recommended his gifted collaborator Tommaso Laureti for the job. Subsequently Cardinal Pier Donato Cesi also sought the eclectic artist. who could now show his qualities as Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola’s student, to execute the fountain of Neptune in piazza Maggiore.