Giulio Quarenghi, Fabbriche e disegni di Giacomo Quarenghi architetto de S. M. l’imperatore di Russia, Mantua: editori Fratelli Negretti

Alessandro Martoni

Printed book

In 1821, Giulio Quarenghi – the son of the celebrated architect, painter and scenographer Giacomo Quarenghi who, in the Russia of Catherine II, Paul I, and Alexander I championed a refined, updated version of neoclassical Palladianism – published in Milan with Paolo Antonio Posi, with printing by Giovanni Pirotta, the first edition of Fabbriche e disegni di Giacomo Quarenghi. The work, dedicated to the Milanese architect Luigi Cagnola, is a collection and documentation of his father’s most important projects. He reused some of the copper plates made by the engraver and cartographer Ivan Ivanovich Kolpakov of Saint Petersburg, which Giacomo Quarenghi himself had published in St. Petersburg in 1810 in the rare edition Edifices construits a Saint-Pétersbourg d’après les plans du Chevalier Quarenghi.
The book’s success and Giulio Quarenghi’s desire to increase awareness of his father’s work among connoisseurs and architects, as well as to convey the didactic qualities of the many Quarenghi drawings and projects, led him to curate a new edition. Printed by Fratelli Negretti in Mantua in two volumes published in 1843 and 1844 and greatly enriched with plans and plates engraved by Giacomo Bassaglia, it became the most reliable source on the architecture of Giacomo Quarenghi.
From the second volume of 1844, dedicated to the crown prince and future Tsar Alexander II, of which the Fondazione Cini owns the intact specimen on display, comes the loose engraving on plate XVIII, which shows the plan with the early-1790s expansion project of the building overlooking the Fontanka belonging to Prince Nikolaj Borisovič Yusupov. A diplomat, patron, and refined collector, Yusupov was also the mediator who, acting on behalf of Catherine II, commissioned Canova with the replica of Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, now on display at the Hermitage. In a letter to the Venetian sculptor in November 1804, Quarenghi wrote “we were just days ago at Prince Jusupoff’s to admire your beautiful statues.” In redefining the pre-existing parts, indicated by the darker color on the map, Quarenghi removed the baroque decorations and resolved, with inspired Palladian rigor, the transition between the central volume – a temple with a triangular pediment and a giant Ionic order linking the piano nobile and the mezzanine – and the lateral volumes – also gabled and rising from a rusticated podium – by means of an elegant fenestration pattern and unified cornices and balustrade. 
The façade overlooking the courtyard is striking with its refined Doric loggias with balustrades and a projecting vestibule that is accessed by curvilinear ramps. The latter are tied together by the wings around the semicircular courtyard, which expands in the form of an amphitheater with triglyphs and with portals enclosed by pairs of colonnades. The design decisions seem inspired by Palladio’s Villa Badoera in Fratta Polesine.
Of grandiloquent and scenographic conception, such as to rival in size and sumptuousness the imperial residences, is the unbuilt project for a palace in Moscow commissioned in 1797 by Prince Aleksandr Andreevič Bežborodko: the project appears in another loose drawing from the 1843 volume (though it had been prepared for the 1821 edition), which should be examined alongside the splendid drawings preserved in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. For Bežborodko, the powerful and wealthy diplomat entrusted by Catherine II with the role of her spokesperson in the Senate, Quarenghi conceived a sumptuous noble residence that included, adjacent to large rooms for receiving and entertaining, a series of cabinets, studies, libraries, dressing rooms, and galleries for hosting rich collections of art and books. It was for this eminent, cultured figure that Quarenghi conceived the famous Piranisi-inspired Kitchen Ruin inthe garden of the dacha in Polyustrovo, which still exists today.

Bibliography: Giacomo Quarenghi, edited by S. Angelini, text by V. Piljavskij, catalog by V. Zanella, (Bergamo: 1984), catt. 26-28 and 197-200; Giacomo Quarenghi. Architetto a Pietroburgo. Lettere e altri scritti, edited by V. Zanni, (Venice: 1987), p. 314; V. Zanella, “A guisa di apologia”: scritti e pubblicazioni di Giacomo Quarenghi sulla teoria e pratica dell’architettura, preface to the reprint of Fabbriche e disegni di Giacomo Quarenghi, (Bergamo: 1994); V. Poletto, in Disegni di Giacomo Quarenghi. Progetti architettonici, exhibition catalog (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia) edited by A. Perissa Torrini and V. Poletto, (Venice: 2018), pp. 160-165, cat. III 3.