Early career The exact year and place of Bazhenov's birth is uncertain; he was born in 1737 or 1738 in a family of a church clerk either in Moscow or in the village of Dolskoye near
Maloyaroslavets. According to the second version, the family relocated to Moscow when Vasily was three months old. In 1753 Vasily volunteered (but was not formally hired) into the
Kremlin-based architectural company of
Dmitry Ukhtomsky, then the only Moscow institution providing basic architectural training. There Bazhenov acquired practical construction skills; poverty forced him to seek paid work instead of classroom training. In 1755 Bazhenov joined the first class of the newly opened
Moscow State University. Bazhenov's first biographer,
Eugene Bolkhovitinov (1767–1837,
Metropolitan of Kiev since 1822), wrote that Bazhenov also studied at the
Slavic Greek Latin Academy but this opinion is firmly refuted by 20th century biographers. Bolkhovitinov, perhaps, knowingly twisted the facts to raise the prestige of clerical colleges. In the beginning of 1758 the University, requested by
Ivan Shuvalov, dispatched a group of sixteen students, including Bazhenov and
Ivan Starov, They, along with twenty boys selected in Saint Petersburg, became the first class of the Academy. Bazhenov, according to his own statement, was assigned to the class of
Savva Chevakinsky, chief architect of the
Russian Admiralty, worked on the construction of the Saint Nicholas church and became a personal mentor and
blood brother of younger Starov. Three years later Bazhenov and painter
Anton Losenko became the first students of the Academy of Arts to be awarded a scholarship out of Russia. Bazhenov trained in
Paris at the workshop of
Charles De Wailly (Starov joined him there in October 1762). and applied for a degree and tenure at the Academy, but the new management had no intention to hire Bazhenov. He was subjected to a rigorous formal examination and was ordered to submit a new graduation project; he had no success with the Academy but was noticed by
Catherine II and her son
Paul, who commissioned Bazhenov to design and build a private mansion on
Kamenny Island. At the end of 1766
Grigory Orlov, then commander of imperial
artillery and
military engineers, hired Baznenov into his retinue, in the military rank of
captain of artillery, and commissioned him the Arsenal in Saint Petersburg. and Bazhenov eagerly responded; as early as 1767 if ever completed, would have replaced
the Kremlin itself, leaving only its cathedrals intact. or 630 meters Layout of the new Kremlin "was the most inventive planning effort of Catherine's reign". Bazhenov expanded his planning into modernizing the city itself, which eventually led to the
Projected Plan officially accepted in 1775, a joint effort led by
Pyotr Kozhin and
Nicholas Legrand.
Nikolay Karamzin wrote in 1817 that "plans of Bazhenov, the famous architect, are similar to
Plato's
Republic or
More's
Utopia: they should be admired in thought and never put into practice." Nevertheless, the project received a go–ahead and the government set up the Kremlin Construction Board (or
Expedition in 18th century parlance), an institution that survived into the 19th century. The Expedition became a new architectural school for local students, starting with Bazhenov's aide
Matvey Kazakov. Kazakov, working in Kremlin since 1768, became Bazhenov's equal after 1770 and took over management of the Expedition in 1786. He surpassed Bazhenov as educator, revitalized Ukhtomsky school and trained
Joseph Bove,
Ivan Yegotov and
Aleksey Bakarev. At the
groundbreaking ceremony (1773) Bazhenov declared that "today we renew old Moscow". Work commenced by shaving of the southern slope of the Kremlin Hill and laying foundation for the supporting buttresses. In 1775 Catherine shut down the project, citing damage to the Cathedral of the Archangel or the simple fact that by 1775 "Catherine had nothing more to prove." is preserved at the
Moscow Museum of Architecture. When the museum was based at the
Donskoy monastery the model was publicly displayed in its main cathedral. In 2001 City of Moscow proposed building a dedicated museum pavilion to display the model in
Alexander Garden but the proposal was rejected.
Tsaritsyno Bazhenov, at least in the first half of Catherine's reign, perfectly understood her taste and stylistic program, that of
Age of Enlightenment rather than of Neoclassicism. During the 1775 celebrations of the
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca on the
Khodynka Field, Bazhenov "turned imitation of English
Gothic Revival into an attempt to create a universal stylistic language for Russian architecture combining typical elements of medieval buildings of both East and West, motifs from
Antiquity and pure fantasy." imperial palaces in Moscow suburbs (in 1775 she lived in a temporary wooden building in
Kolomenskoye). In summer of 1775 Bazhenov designed the first draft of Tsaritsyno, now lost. In 1777 Bazhenov demolished the old wooden manor house of the
Cantemirs, former owners of Tsaritsyno, and started construction of the main palace. The main palace, with an added central annex for Paul's children, In February 1786 Catherine finally awarded Tsaritsyno project to Kazakov; Bazhenov's palace was demolished in summer of 1786. or his Gothic styling; in fact, Kazakov retained both Gothic and Masonic features and most of Bazhenov's auxiliary buildings survived to date. In December 1786 Bazhenov finally retired from state service and had to rely on private commissions alone. The extent of these private jobs, once considered to be numerous (see
attribution problem) has been subsequently revised to a very small number of more or less reliably attributed buildings; in contrast, Matvey Kazakov's legacy of the same period has been documented far better. Shvidkovsky noted that Bazhenov set the style of neoclassical Moscow but it was Kazakov and his
alumni who actually designed and built it. According to Shvidkovsky, residential Moscow before the
fire of 1812 was influenced, through Bazhenov, by works of
Charles de Wailly and his circle; Bazhenov enhanced the French style with use of sculpture and garden architecture. Bazhenov, eager to improve his finances, accepted what looked like a generous offer from
Prokofi Demidov, a wealthy and whimsical patron of arts. Demidov planned to donate a new building to Moscow University; he agreed to refinance Bazhenov's debts in exchange for his design and management services. Relations soon turned sour; Demidov, literally having Bazhenov in his pocket, rejected his design for a downtown campus and ordered Bazhenov to design a new
green field campus on the
Sparrow Hills. This cat and mouse game (as presented in Bazhenov's own writing) continued for nearly a decade; the architect wasted years on a dead end project and remained bankrupt at the mercy of Demidov. Once again Kazakov picked up the job and completed the "old" downtown core of the University in 1793. In 1792 Bazhenov relocated to Saint Petersburg and accepted an uninspiring but stable job of an architect of
Kronstadt admiralty; in his spare time he translated the complete works of
Vitruvius. In April 1792 Bazhenov was implicated in the
Nikolay Novikov affair; police found Bazhenov's letter to Novikov about supplying
masonic books to Paul. Novikov spent four years in
Schlisselburg fortress jail and the theory that he was a long-term agent of
martinists tasked with winning Paul's support. Paul was aware of Bazhenov's real or alleged mission but by 1792 he stepped aside from freemasonry and personally warned Bazhenov against further conspiracies.
Late recognition Emperor
Paul I of Russia supported Bazhenov as one of the alleged victims of
his despised mother. Shortly upon ascension to the throne (1796) Paul summoned Bazhenov to
Saint Petersburg and made him vice-president of the
Imperial Academy of Arts. Bazhenov believed that the Academy must dispose with elementary education and focus on its core subjects, admitting literate teenagers who could prove their talent in an open contest. Paul's main construction project,
Saint Michael's Castle, was awarded to his house architect, Italian
Vincenzo Brenna, while Bazhenov was appointed to supervise Brenna. Historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries could not clearly separate the input of each architect and attributed the design to Brenna and Bazhenov jointly.
Nikolay Lanceray (1930s) and subsequent Russian historians give full credit to Brenna; according to Lanceray, Bazhenov did not interfere in Brenna's designs that were, to a large extent, Brenna's renditions of Paul's own
romantic vision. According to
Dmitry Shvidkovsky, Bazhenov worked on an earlier design of the castle and this fact was later interpreted as his participation in actual design; Brenna "was given the task of adapting Bazhenov's design" but created an independent work. At any rate, Bazhenov died in the middle of the project leaving Brenna in full control; the castle turned out not a Neoclassical building, but "a rare example of an imperial palace genuinely redolent of the
Romantic era." Paul also commissioned Bazhenov to design a new hospital near
Danilov Monastery. Bazhenov, again, responded with an extravagant plan that did not proceed past wooden frame and was replaced by Kazakov's extant Pavlovskaya Hospital built in 1802–1807. Shortly before his death Bazhenov began compilation of an album on
Russian Architecture, collecting drafts of "all large buildings in two capitals." ==Attribution problem==