Giovanni Battista Frapolli (1782-1826)

Giovanni Battista Frapolli was born on 23 June 1782 in Massagno (Canton Ticino), where his family, originally from Scareglia in the Val Colla had been living for several decades, to Giuseppe Antonio Frapolli (1745-1797) and Maria Margherita Luchini from Gentilino (Lugano, Archivio Diocesano, Registri parrocchiali). The younger brother of Francesco Frapolli (see the entry), with whom he collaborated on several occasions, Giovanni Battista Frapolli was active in Odesa from the years immediately following its foundation until his untimely death, murdered by a servant and an accomplice in a robbery (BSSI 1949, p. 49). Among the works he supervised the construction of (and whose designs are attributed to him in the bibliography) are the grain warehouse in the port area, the bell tower of the Church of St. Nicholas, later the Cathedral of the Transfiguration (the city’s main church, see entry) and the two curvilinear wings with which the City Hospital designed by Jean-François Thomas de Thomon was extended in 1821 (the Hospital was built by Francesco Frapolli, who modified the original design, see entry). He is also the author of numerous private residences, such as the house built in 1827 for Paolo (Pavel) Marini (1798-1849), the illegitimate son of Count Viktor P. Kočubej and husband of his niece Vittoria, daughter of Francesco Frapolli. The house is located on the corner of Primorskyi boulevard and Vorontsovskyi alley (modified by later interventions: see Piljavskij 2010, p. 107).
Two other members of the Frapolli family, Peter and Ilya, are also attested in Odesa during the same period, although their relationship to Francesco and Giovanni Battista Frapolli is still unclear (even if they are often mentioned as their brothers).

 
Bibliographical sources
_ “Bollettino Storico della Svizzera italiana”, series IV, y. XXIV, 1949, n. 1, p. 49.
_ A. Crivelli, Artisti ticinesi in Russia. Catalogo critico, Locarno 1966, p. 59.
_ M.B. Michajlova, Architetti italiani e ticinesi a Odessa nella prima metà dell’Ottocento, in P. Angelini, N. Navone, L. Tedeschi (eds.), La cultura architettonica italiana in Russia da Caterina II a Alessandro I, Mendrisio 2008, pp. 207-218.
_ V. Pilavski [sic], Architecture d’Odessa 1794-1924, in M.P. Vial (ed.), La Mémoire d’Odessa, catalogue of the exhibition (Marseille, La Vieille Charité, June-September 1989), Paris 1989, pp. 41-79.
_ V.A. Piljavskij, Zdanija, sooruzhenija, pamjatniki Odessy i ich zodčie, Odessa 2010, passim and pp. 244-245.
_ V.A. Piljavskij, Zodčie Odessy. Istoriko-architekturnoe očerki, Odessa 2010, pp. 17-19.
_ S.K. Kilesso, Frapolli, Giovanni, in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online, Berlin 2021 (p. accessed on 5.5.2022).

Nicola Navone with the collaboration of Iryna Balmeli
Version of: 01.07.2022, updated on 18.02.2025