GIACOMO QUARENGHI
Architect at the Court of the Tsars
2017: the celebrations of the bicentennial
Bergamo ▪ St. Petersburg ▪Venice ▪ Warsaw ▪ Milan ▪ Rome ▪ Mendrisio ▪ Vicenza ▪ Bassano del Grappa ▪ Rovetta ▪ Rota d'Imagna
2017 is the Year of Quarenghi –the "Q Year": exhibitions, publications, conferences, studies, restoration, music and theater, to celebrate in Europe, in Italy and in his native land, the genius of the great neoclassical architect and designer
PRESS RELEASE
In 2017 marks the second centenary of the death of the architect and designer Giacomo Quarenghi (Rota d'Imagna / Bergamo 1744 – St. Petersburg 1817). One of the leading figures of the artistic culture of the eighteenth-century in Europe, participate in the elaboration of the first international modern language.
He was called by the Empress Catherine II in St. Petersburg, where he start his extraordinary career as architect of the Court of the Tsars, during which contributed decisively to recreate the face of the new capital. His career continued with the successors to the throne Paul I and Alexander I, led him to become a true arbiter of taste of neoclassical age.
The number and variety of his projects, mostly made, is unparalleled. His are real landmarks of the city of St. Petersburg, such as the State Bank, the Academy of Sciences, the Smol´nyjInstitute and numerous interventions in the complex of the Imperial Palace (Throne Hall, Hermitage Theatre).
Today the exploration of Quarenghi designs gives us an artistic figure characterized by a fruitful transfer between the invention of architecture and the representative charm of the painter. The statements of his projects, set in attractive landscapes of Italian influence, evoke the Mediterranean myth of his own era.
On the occasion of the bicentennial, important cultural institutions have come together in an International Committee to celebrate the Year of Quarenghi, giving life to a rich program of events on a continental scale, involving museums and institutions that hold important collections of Quarenghi’sdrawings, or variously connected with the architect's life, or involved in the study of his artistic production.
To coordinate the program of the International Committee are the Department of Culture of the City of Bergamo and Osservatorio Quarenghi in Bergamo.
Next to the International Committee has developed a Bergamo Network which brings together associations and cultural institutions of Bergamo and its territory who participate in the celebrations with their own initiatives.
The members of the International Committee are:
In Europe: The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; The National Museum, Warsaw; Archivio del Moderno, Mendrisio.
In Italy: Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; Accademia di Belle Arti di Venice; Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice; Museo Correr, Venice; Fondazione Giorgio Cini – Istituto di Storia dell’arte, Venice; Accademia di Brera, Milan; Civiche Raccolte Grafiche e Fotografiche - Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan; CISA - Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza; Musei Biblioteca Archivio, Bassano del Grappa; Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, Rome; Arciconfraternita dei Bergamaschi in Rome; Sovereign Military Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Rome.
In Bergamo: Comune di Bergamo; Osservatorio Quarenghi; Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai; Fondazione Accademia Carrara; Fondazione Donizetti; Fondazione Bergamo nella storia; Università degli Studi; Archivio di Stato; Ateneo di Scienze Lettere ed Arti; MIUR-Ufficio Scolastico Regionale Ambito Territoriale di Bergamo; Fondazione Fantoni di Rovetta; Comune di Rota d’Imagna.
The celebrations will take place also under the patronage of the Embassy ofthe Russian Federation in the Italian Republic and the General Consulate of the Russian Federation in Milan.
The official opening of the Year Q is scheduled for March 2, 2017, with events to be held simultaneously in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Milan, Rome and Bergamo: the Hermitage in St. Petersburg opens the exhibition of the photographic project by Pavel Demidov that reinterprets with contemporary look the buildings made by Quarenghi, while in Moscow l’Archivio del Moderno di Mendrisio in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow offers a lecture by Letizia Tedeschi. Conference also for The National Museum in Warsaw, with the intervention of Piotr Kibort who starts the project of study and publishing in digital format of the collection of Quarenghi’sdrawings.
Starting from March 2, the Department of Drawings of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan makes available in full on website Graficheincomune.it the collection of Quarenghi’s drawings. A religious celebration in memory of Quarenghi will be celebrated in the church of the Arciconfraternita dei Bergamaschi in Rome.
There are two memorial tablet dedicated to the architect who will be inaugurated on March 2 in Bergamo: the memorial by the Municipality of Bergamo, which will discover in Famedio of the Cemetery with an institutional ceremony and plaque placed by the Osservatorio Quarenghi on the facade of the house via Donizetti, inhabited by the young Quarenghi in Bergamo Alta. At the Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai of Bergamo, which houses the largest collection in the world of Quarenghi’s drawings, open an historical exposition and exhibition that on a weekly basis and for the entire 2017 will present to the public the original architect's drawings.
The initiatives will multiply then during the year:
In Europe
The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is planning a study conference and an exhibition of Quarenghi’s drawings; the National Museum of Warsaw celebrate in an exhibition Quarenghi as a master of Neoclassicism and publish in digital form their own collection of drawings;l’Archivio del Moderno present in the Pinacoteca Giovanni Züst a Rancate (Mendrisio) an exhibition that investigates the presence of Quarenghi in graphic collections of architects in Ticino.
In Italy
In Venice, the study and the publication of the collection of drawings at the Gallerie dell'Accademia with the scientific collaboration of the Università Ca’ Foscari, but also the exhibition of Quarenghi architectural drawings by Accademia di Belle Arti, the publication in digital format of drawings from collections of Fiocco e Pozzi curated by Fondazione Giorgio Cini and development of Quarenghi materials of the Museo Correr; in Milan, the exhibition of Quarenghi historical collections in Accademia di Brera; Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio di Vicenzawill be present to the public the Quarenghi’s drawings from the Papafava collection; the exhibition "Giacomo Quarenghi in the Museo Civico of Bassano del Grappa"; in Rome, the international conference "Giacomo Quarenghi and the british architectural culture", organized by the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, and the issuance of a commemorative stamp by the Order of Malta.
In Bergamo
Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai propose the publication in digital of collection of Francesco Maria Quarenghi documents, architect’s brother, and the publication of a new collection of Quarenghi letters. It will be deepened with restoration, study and publication, the precious, but still little known Quarenghi collection of the Fondazione Accademia Carrara. Fondazione Donizetti will dedicate to Quarenghi a special project, including the staging of Donizetti's "The mayor of Saardam ", with the Tsar Peter I as the protagonist. And then: an exhibition of historical photographs at the Fondazione Bergamo nella storia; the scientific collaboration of the Università degli Studi di Bergamo to editorials initiatives and celebratory moments with the involvement of Russian institutions; documentary exhibition at the Archivio di Stato; letters from Russia by the Marquis Giuseppe Terzi presented by Ateneo di Scienze Lettere ed Arti. For exploit educational opportunities of the Year of Quarenghi, the Ufficio Scolastico Territoriale will involve schools in Bergamo and of the territory, while Fondazione Fantoni in Rovettawill exhibit Quarenghi’s drawings of his collections and the Comune di Rota d'Imagna propose an exhibition that tells the Quarenghi itinerary between text and images.
The Q Year program is constantly in evolution. Updated programme on the website
Giacomo Quarenghi(Rota Imagna, Bergamo province 1744 – St Petersburg 1817)
The great architect and refined designer was one of the most outstanding and prolific artists of the Neoclassical movement in Europe. After youthful studies of painting at Bergamo, he moved to Rome while not yet twenty to receive training as an artist in the studios of Anton Raphael Mengs and, later, Stefano Pozzi. Without ever forgetting his passion for drawing, it was here that he felt his inner calling to architecture.The nearly twenty years he spent in Rome, the extraordinary cosmopolitan destination of the Grand Tour where a renewal of taste was under way, provided him with profound cultural stimuli but gave him few occasions for professional realisation. The turning point of his destiny was the invitation to move to Russia as the Court Architect of the Empress Catherine II. On arriving in St Petersburg in early 1780, he immediately set out on an astonishing and frenetic professional career. His art entranced Catherine, who saw in him the true expression of her own Enlightenment aspirations. The number of Quarenghi’s projects and executions is astounding, not only in Petersburg and in the surrounding estates, but also in Moscow and in other parts of the empire.He was favoured also by the successors of Catherine the Great: the tsars Paul and Alexander I. The uninterrupted sequence of his professional commitments allowed him only one brief return to Italy (1810-1811), but it was in Russia that new projects awaited his art and it was there that he ended his life.
Coordinated communication for the Q Year:
Barbara Mazzoleni > cell. 320.8015469 >