Zhiliardi, Dementii

(also Doménico Gilardi). Born 1788, in Montagnola, near Lugano, Switzerland; died there Feb. 28, 1845. Architect; representative of the Russian Empire style. Italian by nationality. Son of architect Ivan (Giovanni Battista) Dement’evich Zhiliardi (1759–1819), who worked in Moscow from 1787 (or 1789) until 1817.

Zhiliardi studied with his father, and then at the Milan Academy of Arts (1806–10). He worked in Russia from 1810 to 1832, and in 1830 he was made an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. After the fire of 1812, he participated actively in the rebuilding of Moscow, creating a number of monumental formal-majestic public buildings and residential houses, which had a great impact on the formation of the city’s architectural appearance. His principal works in Moscow included the restoration of the university building (1817–19) and the rebuilding of the Widows’ House (now the Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians, 1818) and the Ekaterina Institute (now the Central House of the Soviet Army, after 1812). Among the buildings that he worked on with A. G. Grigor’ev were the Guardianship Council building (now the building of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, 1823–26) and the rebuilding of the Slobodskoi Palace for the trade schools of the Foundling Hospital (now the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School, 1827–32). Zhiliardi also built residential houses for the Lunins (1818–23) and S. S. Gagarin (later the House of Horse Breeding, now the A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature; 1820), among others, and the ensemble of the Usachevs-Naidenovs estate (now a hospital, 1829–31). In building the last-named as well as in rebuilding the Kuz’minki estate, Zhiliardi showed that he was a master of garden and park architecture.