Vincenzo Brenna

Vincenzo Brenna
Engraving by Cardelli, around 1800
Born	20.8.1741 Rome
Died	1820 Dresden
Nationality	Italy
Alma mater	School of Stefano Pozzi
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Saint Michael's Castle
Projects	Gatchina and Pavlovsk Palace

Vincenzo Brenna (1747 – May 17, 1820) was an Italian architect and painter who was the house architect of Paul I of Russia. Brenna was hired by Paul and his spouse Maria Fyodorovna as interior decorator in 1781 and by the end of 1780s became the couple's leading architect. Brenna worked on Pavlovsk Palace and Gatchina palaces, rebuilt Saint Isaac's Cathedral, and most notably created Saint Michael's Castle in Saint Petersburg. Most of his architectural works were created concurrently during Paul's brief reign (November 1796 – March 1801). Soon after Paul was murdered in a palace coup Brenna, renowned for fraud and embezzlement barely tolerated by his late patron, retired and left Russia for an uneventful life in Saxony.

Brenna never reached the level of his better known contemporaries Giacomo Quarenghi, Charles Cameron and Vasili Bazhenov and was soon surpassed by his own trainee Carlo Rossi. Nevertheless, historians Igor Grabar,Nikolay Lanceray and Dmitry Shvidkovsky praised him for sincere and unrestricted naturalism of his graphic work and considered him to be the watershed between the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism in Russian architecture.

Brenna belonged to an old Ticino family that had split into two branches, stonemasons (Brenno) and painters (Brenni) not later than the last quarter of the 17th century. Stonemasons and marbling experts Karl Antonio and Francesco Brenno worked in the 1680s in Salzburg. Karl Enrico Brenno (Brennus) carved elaborate tombs in Denmark and Hamburg, but was better known for his marbling artwork at Fredensborg, Christiansborg and Klausholm palaces. Giovanni Battista Brenno, stucco expert, worked in Bavaria. The other branch produced three brothers Brenni (born in the 1730s), fresco painters. Vincenzo Brenna, son of Francesco, was born in 1747 in Florence (19th-century sources list him as a native of Rome, perhaps due to his signature Del cavalier Brenna Romano). It is not clear whether Vincenzo Brenna belonged to Brenno or Brenni branch.