Harmony of Style in Architecture: Drawings by Giacomo Quarenghi (1744-1817) from Italian Municipal Collections

On 28 May, 2003, opened an exhibition (The hall of Twelve Columns, ð 244) dedicated to the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi, showing one hundred thirty works from the Museo Castello Sforzesco in Milan and the Civica Biblioteca "Angelo Mai" in Bergamo. The exhibition was prepared by the Hermitage, Municipality of Milan and Municipal Art Collection of Milan with the participation of the Municipality of Bergamo and the Civica Biblioteca "Angelo Mai".

Giacomo Quarenghi (1744-1817) was one of the pleiad of the outstanding architects of St. Petersburg. He designed about forty buildings in the Northern capital and its suburbs, including the Hermitage Theater, Academy of Arts and Smolny Institute, Moscow, central Russia, Baltic lands and Ukraine.

Though Russian museums possess sizable collections of Quarenghi’s drawings, most of them are concentrated in the Italian cities Bergamo, Milan, Venice and Bassano.

This exhibition has a more domestic air compared to the shows held at the Hermitage in 1967 and 1994. The previous exhibitions included materials from Russian museums, mostly designs of monumental buildings. The drawings and sketches of interior decorations and applied art introduce the public to the process of the master’s work.

The Italian party has published a full-color illustrated catalogue of the show. The exhibition curator is Militsa F. Korshunova of the Hermitage Department of West European Art, Custodian of Giacomo Quarenghi’s Drawings.

"The exhibition of Giacomo Quarenghi’s drawings from Italian municipal collections is a precious gift and a noble gesture of the Municipalities and Museums of Milan and Bergamo for the 300th Anniversary of St. Petersburg, which to a great extent owes its orderly beauty to this outstanding architect. He managed to express the spirit which Peter I strove to breathe into his new capital. Italian grandeur took on new shades on the Neva banks. The name of Quarenghi itself is for us today a symbol of classical beauty, a Northern echo of Rome’s antique legacy. The many creations of this Italian-born master have become Russia’s prized national heritage," says the Hermitage Director Mikhail B. Piotrovsky in his introduction to the catalogue.

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