- Antonio Rinaldi
Antonio Rinaldi (
1710 -April 10 1794 ) was an Italianarchitect , trained byLuigi Vanvitelli , who worked mainly inRussia .In 1751, during a trip to
England , he was summoned by hetmanKirill Razumovsky to decorate his residences inUkraine . To this early period belong the Resurrection cathedral inPochep nearBryansk and the Catherine Cathedral in Yamburg, now Kingisepp nearSt Petersburg ("illustrated, right"), where Rinaldi successfully expressed the domed, centrally-planned form required by traditional Russian Orthodox practice in a confident Italian Late Baroque vocabulary.His first important secular commission was the Novoznamenka
chateau of Chancellor Woronzow. In 1754, he was appointed chief architect of the "young court", i.e., the future Peter III and Catherine II, who resided at Oranienbaum. In that town he executed his best-knownbaroque designs: the Palace of Peter III (1758-60), the sumptuously decorated Chinese Palace (1762-68), and the Ice-Sliding Pavilion (1762-74).In the 1770s, Rinaldi served as the main architect of
Count Orlov , who was Catherine's prime favourite and the most powerful man in the country. During this period he built two grandiose Neoclassical residences, namely theMarble Palace on thePalace Embankment in St Petersburg and the roomy Gatchina Castle, which was subsequently acquired forEmperor Paul and partly remodeled. He also designed for Orlov several monuments inTsarskoe Selo , notably the Orlov Gates,Kagul Obelisk and theChesma Column . He completed the work started byJean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe on theCatholic Church of St. Catherine .Rinaldi's last works represent a continuous transition from the dazzling
rococo of interiors to the reserved and clear-cut treatment of facades characteristic ofNeoclassicism . These include two St Petersburg cathedrals, one dedicated to St Isaac the Dalmatian and subsequently demolished to make way for the present Empire-style structure, and the other, dedicated to Prince Vladimir and still standing.In 1784, the old master resigned his posts on account of bad health and returned to Italy. He died in
Rome in 1794.
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