Andreyan Dmitrievich Zakharov

Andreyan Dmitrievich Zakharov
b. St Petersburg (Leningrad), 1761;
d. St Petersburg, 1811.

Andreyan Dmitrievich Zakharov was a Leading Russian classicist of the early c19. Son of a minor admiralty official, Zakharov entered the preparatory school of the Academy of Arts in 1767, ultimately graduating from its Architecture School in 1782 with the gold medal. The prize took him to Paris for four years under J.F.T. Chalgrin and to Italy. On his return he taught at the Academy from 1787, becoming senior professor of architecture in 1803. He was appointed chief architect to the admiralty in 1805. His early work for various establishments was eclectic, including a Neo-Gothic church at Gatchina. Large urban scale characterized other early projects, including an unrealized one for unifying all buildings of the Academy of Sciences into one grandiose structure, and a highly successful one for developing the tip of Vasilevsky Island with a Bourse complex and related new urban space. The two characteristics came together in his redevelopment of the whole admiralty complex in central Petersburg. Replicating the needle-like gilded spire of the previous complex (by 1. K. Korobov), Zakharov wove an original and eclectic synthesis of Classical motifs into the most powerful of all architectural expressions of Russia’s imperial power, with volumes of great geometrical clarity, subtle regulation of vast elevation-al lengths through recession and the play of columnar and flat-wall surfaces, and with superbly scaled symbolic and narrative sculpture. The result was a world-class model of true classical continuity between a city-planning concept, the architectural language and the narrative potential of public art.

Major buildings / works:
Monastery church at Gatchina, near St Petersburg (Leningrad), 1800.
Development plan for Bourse site, Leningrad, 1803-4.
Mizhuev mansion, Fontanka 26, Leningrad, 1804-6.
St Andrew’s Cathedral, Kronstadt naval base, 1806-17.
Admiralty complex, Leningrad, 1806-23.

Bibliography:
A. N. Petrov et al., Pamyatniki arkbitektury Leningrada, Leningrad, 1976.
W. C. Brumfield, Gold in Azure, Boston, Mass., 1983