Background
Giacomo Quarenghi was born on September 20, 1744 in Bergamo, Italy. His father was a painter.
Giacomo Quarenghi was born on September 20, 1744 in Bergamo, Italy. His father was a painter.
Initially, Giacomo studied painting in the Bergamo studio of G. Reggi under the guidance of Tiepolo. Some time later, Quarenghi went on to study painting in Rome, where he was taught by Anton Raphael Mengs and Stefano Pozzi.
Giacomo began to travel around Italy immediately after his studies. He visited Vicenza, Verona, Mantua and Venice, the places where he made the longest stays. In Italy, Giacomo painted Greek temples at Paestum.
The painter came back to Rome in 1763, the period, when Neoclassicism started to develop in advanced artistic circles. Six years later, in 1769, Quarenghi was introduced to Andrea Palladio's Quattro Libri d'archittetura, a work comprised of four volumes published in 1570 that was a centerpiece and sourcebook for the neoclassicist architectural movement.
During that time, Quarenghi’s career as an architect began to take shape. While studying the works of Palladio in Venice, Quarenghi was approached by a British lord who had seen some of his projects and work as a student. The lord was impressed, and gave Quarenghi a commission to work on various minor English projects mainly consisting of private pavilions, chimneys and other private property. Eventually, Quarenghi would gain his first major commission.
In 1771 he was hired to oversee the internal reconstruction of the monastery of Santa Scholastica at Subiaco.
By 1779, Quarenghi had already assembled an impressive resume of free-lance work as an architect in Italy and England, but Quarenghi remained ambitious. He was in search of even greater opportunities and recognition in his chosen craft when he was approached by Count Riffenstein, an ambassador of Catherine II of Russia. Catherine was in search of new Italian architects to work on a number of projects in the heart of Imperial Russia, and Quarenghi accepted the position offered him immediately, moving with his family to St. Petersburg at the end of 1779. He was given the title of official architect of the court.
Among his first important commissions were the English Palace at Peterhof, since destroyed, and the Hermitage Theatre. These were the first buildings in Russia in the Palladian style. Other early constructions include the massive Bourse and the State Bank.
His other works in St. Petersburg included St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace, several bridges on the Neva, and a number of academic structures, including the Academy of Sciences, the Catherine Institute (now the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library) and the Smolny Institute. At the royal residence of Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin), Quarenghi designed the baths, concert hall, church, the Alexander Palace and other structures.
When Emperor Paul took the Maltese knights under his protection, Quarenghi also joined the Order and served as its official architect until 1800. His commissions became less frequent due to the fact, that his works seemed to be boring to those courtiers, who was delighted by Quarenghi's compositions a decade earlier.
Upon his return to Italy in 1801, the painter turned his attention to watercolours, published several albums of neo-Palladian designs and provided elaborate designs for decorative vases, capitals for columns and metalwork executed for imperial residences, particularly the Winter Palace.
Cathedral Square of the Moscow Kremlin
Design of a Triumphal Arch
Ruined tower and Orlovsky gate
Design of Samuel Greig's tomb in Tallinn
Design of the Hermitage Theater in St. Petersburg (section)
Church of the Assumption on Pokrovka
Terem Palace
Design for the Smolny Institute in St Petersburg (façade)
View of Saint Michael's Palace
Kolomenskoye
View of the New Jerusalem Monastery near Moscow
Giacomo Quarenghi had thirteen children.