Vasily Stasov

Vasily Petrovich Stasov (Russian: Васи́лий Петро́вич Ста́сов; 4 August 1769 – 5 September 1848) was a Russian architect.

Stasov was born in Moscow.

He extensively travelled in France and Italy, where he became professor at the St Luke Academy in Rome. On his return home, he was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts (1811). One of his early works, the Gruzino estate near Novgorod, was built for Count Alexey Arakcheyev in the 1810s and was completely destroyed during World War II.

While developing guidelines for other architects, Stasov advocated making even the most trivial of buildings—barracks, storehouses, stables—look imposing and monumental. He worked much to embellish Tsarskoe Selo, where he designed the famous Pushkin Lyceum and the fanciful Chinese Village. After the great fire of 1820, he was entrusted to remodel in the Neoclassical style some premises of the baroque Catherine Palace.

Stasov's first important commissions in the capital were the Transfiguration and the Trinity cathedrals for the regiments of the Russian Imperial Guard. The interior decoration of the Smolny Cathedral also belongs to him.

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