Giacomo Quarenghi was born in the village of Rota Fuori near the city of Bergamo in northern Italy, in Lombardy (Northern Italy), a region long renowned for skilled stonemasons and builders. In 1763, Quarenghi went to Rome, where he studied painting in the workshop of Anton Raphael Mengs, then with Stefano Pozzi, and architecture with Paolo Pozzi, befriending the future architect Vincenzo Brenna. In Rome, Quarenghi attended lectures on the theory of proportions by Antoine Derizet. Under the influence of the latter and Piranesi’s engravings, the young Quarenghi became fascinated with classical architecture. In Rome, Quarenghi became acquainted with Andrea Palladio’s treatise *The Four Books of Architecture*, an event that defined his entire subsequent creative biography. Influenced by the book, he began traveling across Europe to study architecture. He built a riding hall in Monaco and a dining hall in the house of the Archduchess of Modena in Vienna. Quarenghi traveled extensively throughout Northern and Southern Italy and was familiar with the works of another Palladian from Vicenza — Ottone Calderari. In Italy and later in Russia, Quarenghi often copied drawings by other neoclassical architects.
In 1769, Quarenghi received a commission to remodel the interior of the medieval church of Santa Scholastica in the town of Subiaco near Rome. Construction took place from 1770 to 1773. The interior of this church “is one of the first and most valuable examples of neoclassicism… the only one in Lazio.â€
In 1771, Quarenghi visited Vicenza, home to Palladio’s main buildings, and met there with Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi, a Palladio admirer who published a collection of authentic drawings of the great architect between 1776 and 1783. In Venice, Quarenghi befriended Tommaso Temanza, author of a biography of Palladio published in 1762. Quarenghi was dissatisfied with the tastes prevailing in contemporary Italian architecture (“survivals of Baroque splendorâ€), as he wrote in letters to Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein, an expert on Roman antiquities and friend of Winckelmann.
In 1779, Quarenghi returned to Rome, where he met Friedrich Grimm. Baron Grimm came to Italy on behalf of Empress Catherine II to find architects for work in Russia. On Reiffenstein’s recommendation, who was also Catherine II’s “art agent†in Rome, Quarenghi signed a contract to work in Russia (initially for three years), where he worked for 37 years until his death.
In October 1779, Quarenghi and his wife traveled via Venice and the Black Sea to Crimea, and from there to St. Petersburg. At 35 years old, unlike other Italians in Russia, he arrived in January 1780 with extensive experience as “architect to Her Majesty’s court.â€
On his way to Russia, Quarenghi brought with him the first two volumes of Palladio’s drawings, published in Venice by Bertotti Scamozzi. Before departure, the architect and his wife obtained a notarized document certifying the nobility of their family. The Quarenghi family has been known in Bergamo since the 12th century. At that time, noble lineage was especially important for employment in Russia. Under Emperor Paul I, who made himself Grand Master of the Order of Malta, the Catholic Quarenghi was also inducted as a knight of the order on July 19, 1800. The emperor offered him the position of the order’s architect (one of Quarenghi’s ancestors had already belonged to the Knights of St. John in the 16th century). The Russian State Archive in St. Petersburg holds the Quarenghi family coat of arms, drawn by the architect and certified by the Neapolitan ambassador. In 1799, the palace of Count Vorontsov, built by Rastrelli’s design, was assigned as the residence of the Order of Malta. Quarenghi designed and added the Maltese Chapel to the palace.
During his first decade in Russia, he built the English Palace in Peterhof and a pavilion in Tsarskoye Selo. In St. Petersburg, Quarenghi constructed the buildings of the Hermitage Theatre, the Academy of Sciences, the Assignation Bank, and the Foreign College. He also fulfilled several commissions for high-ranking nobles, notably the summer palace of Count Bezborodko in St. Petersburg.
Under Paul I, Quarenghi built the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. At the same time, he designed the palace of Count Zavadovsky in Lyalichi.
“The old man Quarenghi often walked on foot, and everyone knew him because he was remarkable for the huge bluish bulb that nature had stuck to his face instead of a nose†(Vigel).
In the first decade of the 19th century, Quarenghi’s designs in St. Petersburg included the Horse Guards Riding Hall, the building of the Imperial Cabinet, the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, and the buildings of the Catherine Institute for Noble Maidens and the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens.
At the end of 1810, Quarenghi left St. Petersburg for Bergamo for the last time. He was given a ceremonial welcome in his hometown. But already in 1811, Quarenghi hurried back to Russia. Due to preparations for Napoleon’s campaign against Russia, Italians in Russian service were ordered to return to Italy; however, Quarenghi refused to comply and was sentenced to death in absentia with confiscation of property. Among the last works of the master was the construction of temporary wooden triumphal gates at the Narva Gate in honor of the victory over Napoleon.
Quarenghi died on March 2, 1817, in St. Petersburg. He was buried in the Catholic section of the Volkovo Cemetery, where his grave was long considered lost. In the 1960s, the discovery of Quarenghi’s grave was announced, after which his remains were reburied in 1967 at the Lazarevskoe Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Upon arriving in Petersburg, Quarenghi found himself in a complex situation. The Russian capital was architecturally a very contradictory whole. Traces of regular planning from the Petrine and Anna periods (a three-rayed city center system) coexisted with chaotic development and lavish Baroque-Rocaille facades of palaces built by Rastrelli in the mid-18th century. Behind the lavish facades and French-style cour d’honneur reigned complete chaos. Quarenghi managed to transfer the architecture of suburban Italian villas (*Villa suburbana*), developed by Palladio, into urban development. Despite arising difficulties, Quarenghi was able to filter his neoclassical, even purist, understanding of architecture through Baroque sensibilities. He boldly integrated his own buildings into the pre-existing Baroque-picturesque environment of the Russian capital. For example, Quarenghi masterfully fit the strictly symmetrical Palladian composition of the Assignation Bank building into the asymmetrical space between Sadovaya Street and the bend of the Catherine Canal (the semicircular open colonnades were later altered). Regarding planning tradition, Quarenghi, like Palladio, was a true Roman but capable, when necessary, of combining both compositional principles: symmetrical and asymmetrical, picturesque.
Using the experience of English Palladians and architects of the French Academy of Architecture, Quarenghi managed to fuse the typical composition of an Italian villa, developed by Palladio, with the French hôtel particulier (urban mansion) featuring a triangular pediment and a cour d’honneur. Unlike Parisian academicians and English Palladians, Quarenghi succeeded in creating his own variant of neoclassical architecture, which became part of the St. Petersburg style of Catherine’s neoclassicism in the second half of the 18th century. Vicentine followers of Palladio adopted only certain facade composition techniques using order elements from their great teacher. The compositions of neoclassical Florentine facades are flat. Quarenghi, addressing antique models directly through Palladio, created “block-like†and spatial compositions.
Externally, Quarenghi’s buildings in Petersburg are uniform, explained by the fact that in his projects the Bergamo architect strictly followed principles of neoclassical architecture that he himself formulated:
- visual unity and compositional closure;
- emphasis on the central portico with an external staircase, colonnade, and triangular pediment;
- simplicity, conciseness, and clarity of proportions “according to Palladio†(in simple whole number ratios).
Quarenghi’s contemporary, the Russian poet Derzhavin, somewhat ironically noted a feature of Russian neoclassical buildings, created first by Quarenghi — the portico with a triangular pediment in the center of the main facade, emphasizing that such buildings have a “temple-like appearance.†In his first building upon arriving in Russia — the English Palace in the southwestern part of Peterhof, the suburban mansion of Empress Catherine II — Quarenghi almost completely replicated Palladio’s composition of Villa Mocenigo on the Brenta River. At the center of the building is an eight-column portico with a triangular pediment and a wide staircase leading to it. Another characteristic device frequently repeated by Quarenghi is raising the colonnade on a high plinth or arched bel étage.
Some buildings of the same scheme built by Quarenghi in Petersburg resemble works by English Palladians. Quarenghi used open extended colonnades, almost never found in Palladio’s projects, for example, in Count Bezborodko’s estate in Petersburg. Palladio more often included closed colonnades like loggias, rooted in traditional Italian rural canopies on posts. In France, semicircular galleries were used, for instance, in the inner courtyard of the Hôtel de Soubise in Paris, but there they were also closed. Nevertheless, Quarenghi called “transparent†colonnades “alla francese.†These eventually became typical for Russian estate architecture.
The composition of the Hermitage Theatre for court performances is entirely original, with the prototype chosen as the ancient Greek *theatron* (not without the Empress’s involvement). Quarenghi had previously studied ancient theaters, and for the engraved 1787 edition dedicated to the Hermitage Theatre in Petersburg, he specially made a drawing of the Roman theater and a measured drawing of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. Inside the theater, Quarenghi used Corinthian columns clad in artificial marble, niches with statues of Apollo and the nine Muses, and round medallions with profile portraits of famous poets and composers. Many operas, ballets, and dramatic performances were staged on the theater’s stage, including plays written by the Empress herself. According to Quarenghi, he built the Hermitage Theatre based on direct impressions from the ancient theater in Pompeii. The stage masks on the Corinthian capitals of the theater’s interior were made “following the examples seen in Rome and, mainly, those I found in the excavations of the Pompeii theater.â€
Quarenghi successfully developed the motif of a free-standing colonnade in the building of the Cabinet of the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg, quite unusually combining Ionic capitals with a Doric entablature. The composition of the Alexander Palace (for the future Emperor Alexander I) in Tsarskoye Selo has no direct prototypes, neither in antiquity nor in Palladio. Two risalits are “drawn together†by an extended double Corinthian colonnade facing the pond, through which the inner courtyard “shines through,†something between a Roman atrium and a French cour d’honneur. In other buildings, Quarenghi almost exactly copies Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (Almerico-Capra). Quarenghi’s work in Russia is unique; it does not repeat the works of other outstanding architects of Catherine’s neoclassicism: A. Rinaldi, J.-B. Vallin de la Mothe, C. Cameron, N. A. Lvov, M. Yu. Felten, nor is it similar to the works of Italian, French, and English Palladians.
An important part of Quarenghi’s legacy is his graphic work. Quarenghi was an outstanding draftsman. He drew extensively from life: monuments of ancient Russian architecture, works by his colleagues, portraits, caricatures. His architectural, including project, graphics are distinguished by a lively, fluent manner. He loved to depict his buildings with pen and brush, watercolor and ink, in a landscape setting filled with light and inhabited by human figures. A special interest lies in comparing the styles of two outstanding architectural graphic artists: Giacomo Quarenghi and Charles Cameron.
