At the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice an exhibition of drawings by Giacomo Quarenghi

On view at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, from March 2 to June 17, 2018, is the exhibition Giacomo Quarenghi. Architectural Projects, dedicated to the architectural drawings referable to the great architect Giacomo Quarenghi (Rota d’Imagna, 1744 - St. Petersburg, 1817), whose bicentenary of his death occurred in 2017. The public, in the rooms of the Galleries, will be able to see about one hundred drawings of the 213 that are part of the museum’s collection: many of these sheets are unpublished and are now being exhibited for the first time. The exhibition also provided the occasion for the compilation of the catalog that files the entire nucleus of Quarenghi’s drawings belonging to the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

These drawings arrived at the Venice Academy in 1824, just two years after the purchase of the well-known collection of antique drawings by Giuseppe Bossi (Busto Arsizio, 1777 - Milan, 1815), a distinguished artist as well as secretary of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. Giacomo Quarenghi, a Bergamasque architect, neoclassicist and admirer of Palladio, was one of the leading Italian architects working in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, although his flair found fortune mainly in Russia where, called in 1779 by Catherine II, he became the official architect of the imperial court: In fact, he also worked for Paul I and Alexander I until his death in St. Petersburg (the artist had by then been established in Russia for nearly forty years).

“The documents, epistolary reports and drawings of those years,” the presentation reads, “render an incessant and almost frenetic activity that saw him design with great versatility public, religious, and commercial buildings, sumptuous private residences or simpler country houses for vacationing. Not all of Quarenghi’s ideations reached final construction, nevertheless his designs significantly affected the monumental and urbanistic appearance of St. Petersburg and, albeit with less intensity, of Moscow as well. Of all this there remained an impressive graphic production, partly autograph and partly delegated to close collaborators, which soon became the object of early collecting passion on the part of amateurs and scholars.” It was precisely in order to meet the needs of scholars and students at the Accademia in Venice that Leopoldo Cicognara, a great animator of the early years of the Accademia Galleries, proposed the purchase of the Quarenghi fund, one of the most important Quarenghi collections in the world because of the high quality of the drawings, which in several examples also bear the signatures of the emperors for approval, as well as the fact that they are representative of almost all of Giacomo Quarenghi’s most important projects. From the collection emerges the figure of an artist “with a substantially balanced division between architectural projects and views and whimsy”-the academics probably wanted to ensure that the sheets would be useful to all students, not just those in architecture.

The exhibition, curated by Paola Marini, Annalisa Perissa and Valeria Poletto, is sponsored by the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Technical sponsor UNISVE srl. The catalog (entitled Disegni di Giacomo Quarenghi. Architectural Projects) is edited by Annalisa Perissa and Valeria Poletto and published by lineadacqua edizioni. The exhibition is open during the opening hours of the Galleries: Mondays from 8:15 a.m. to 2 p.m., all other days from 8:15 a.m. to 7:15 p.m. (the ticket office closes an hour before). Closed May 1. Tickets: full 15 euros, reduced 7.50 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25 and tenured teachers not accompanying students, free for under 18s, EU students and academics from the faculties of architecture, cultural heritage and educational sciences enrolled in degree programs in literature or literary subjects with an archaeological or art-historical focus, or enrolled in the Academies of Fine Arts, MiBACT employees, ICOM members, EU disabled, journalists. Info at www.gallerieaccademia.it.

At the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice an exhibition of drawings by Giacomo Quarenghi

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