Gaspare Fossati

Gaspare Fossati (* 7. October 1809 in Morcote (Ticino); † 5. September 1883 ) was an architect of classicism , which mainly by the restoration of the Hagia Sophia by Sultan I. Abdülmecid became known.

life and work

Benardaki Villa (House 86) on Nevsky Prospect

Gaspare grew up in a family of architects. After studying at the Accademia di Brera and traveling to make lithographs, he went to St. Petersburg in 1833, at the age of 24 , where he worked with Luigi Rusca and was influenced by the classicist Carlo Rossi . During this time he designed, among other things, the Italian Church in Moscow , a church in Kronstadt and the Benardaki Villa on Nevsky Prospect . In 1836 he was appointed court architect to the tsar. He married Rusca's daughter and was sent to Istanbul in 1837 to design the Russian embassy in Constantinople.

Unlike in Italy, Fossati succeeded in the less saturated Istanbul architecture market. In the course of the construction there were numerous side orders, so that Gaspare was able to employ his stepbrother Alessandro Rusca and his 17-year-old brother Giuseppe Fossati , also a graduate of the Accademia di Brera. Gaspare's brother Giuseppe built the Church of the Holy Spirit (Santo Spirito) and several private and public buildings in Istanbul; together with his brother also the Dutch and Spanish embassies.

Since the brothers had developed a good reputation as architects, Sultan Abdülmecid I became aware of them and had the new Ottoman University built next to Hagia Sophia from 1845 to 1849. He then commissioned her with a complete restoration of Hagia Sophia, which was carried out from 1847 to 1849.

Despite numerous orders, Gaspare returned to Milan in 1862, where he was a member of the commission for the construction of the Galleria and Piazza Duomo . He died in his hometown of Morcote in 1883.

Milan's Via Fratelli Fossati was named after Gaspare and Giuseppe in 1935.

literature

• Caspare [sic] Fossati, Hagia Sophia. Based on the table from 1852. Explained and with an afterword by Urs Peschlow . Dortmund, Harenberg 1980.
• Godfrey Goodwin: Gaspare Fossati di Morcote and his Brother Giuseppe. , in: Environmental Design. Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Center 1990, pp. 122-127.
• Volker Hoffmann (ed.): The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Images from six centuries and Gaspare Fossati's restoration from 1847 to 1849 . Catalog of the exhibition in the Bernisches Historisches Museum May 12 to July 11, 1999 and in the Winckelmann Museum Stendal July 24 to September 26, 1999. Bern, Peter Lang-Verlag 1999.
• Klaus Kreiser: Public Monuments in Turkey and Egypt, 1860-1916. In: Muqarnas 14, 1997, pp. 103-117.
• Lucia Pedrini Stanga: Gaspare Fossati. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . July 12, 2005 , accessed December 6, 2019 .
• Sabine Schlüter: Gaspare Fossatis restoration of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul 1847-49 . Peter Lang-Verlag 1999.

Web links

• Gaspare Fossati (Italian) at ti.ch/can/oltreconfiniti, accessed July 8, 2015