Giacomo Quarenghi. Pictorial Projects. Until June 17 at Gallerie dell'Accademia

• WEBSITE: www.accademiavenezia.it

• LOCATION: Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venezia

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Around 100 drawings, most of them unpublished, will be presented at the exhibition "Giacomo Quarenghi. Pictorial Projects", from March 1 to June 17 will fill up the Gallerie dell'Accaddemia. The exhibition, set up on the occasion of the bicentennial from the death of the artist (1744-1817), is dedicated to the architectural compositions of the author from Bergamo. THE ARTIST, HIS WORK AND VENICE The drawings of Giacomo Quarenghi arrived at Gallerie dell'Accademia in 1824, two years after the prestigious collection of ancient drawings by Giuseppe Bossi has been bought. In addition to the architectural subjects, Vedute and Capricci, already published, are generously represented. Quarenghi which was a big exponent of neoclasicism and a deep evaluator of Andrea Palladio has been called from Russia in 1779 by Caterina II (1762-1796), becoming soon her official architect. After the death of the empress he continued to work for years for her successors, the son Paolo I (1796-1801) and the grandson Alessandro I (1801-1825) till the end of his days, happened in St.Petersburg in 1817 at the end of a journey in Russia almost fourty years long. Quarenghi's commissioning wasn't only at the imperial court but was extended also to high aristocracy, national and international, moving around the capital. The documents, the letters, and the compositions of those days tell a constant and almost frenetic activity of planning with big versatility, public, commercial and religious buildings, sumptuous residences or the simpler farm houses for holidays.  Not all the ideas of Quarenghi arrived to be build, nevertheless his projects affected substantially the urbanistic and monumental appearance of St. Petersburg, and, even if to a lesser extent, of Moscow as well. What remain is a wide graphic production, some autograph and some by his closer collaborators that soon became object of collecting for scholars and lovers. In this context also the purchase of some drawings that the Austrian Government did for the Venetian Academy, a purchase suggested once again to Leopoldo Cicognara by abbot Luigi Celotti, protagonist of the Bossi collection's trade. The premature Venetian purchase and the considerable amount of the fund, despite some lacks, made of this, one of the most important Quarenghi's collections, a sort of 'first choices' with a lot of high quality compositions, sometimes with the signs of the sovereigns on them and highly representative of the architect. The arrival of the collection in Venice was supported by the longlasting relationship the architect had, even if long-distance, with personalities and academics of the city. His fascination for Palladio, whose lesson is constant in his projects, brought him, during his young age, to Palladio's locations and to the meetings with Tommaso Temanza and Giannantonio Selva. It isn't so clear how the selection of the papers was made in that moment when the son Giulio owned, intact, the entire collection. But the Venetian nucleus seems accurately designed to show both Quarenghi architect and artist, with an accurate division of architectural projects from vedute and capricci. This coming from,  maybe, the wish of the academics to transform the purchase into something useful not just for architects but for all the students, or maybe for the intent of Giulio to show an image of the father as complete as possible. In the same way the part dedicated to his architectural projects, are representative of all the main works and the functional typologies he used even if they were all projected during his Russian stay. ENTRANCE Full 15€ Reduced 7,50€ Everyday 8.15am - 7.15pm