Laurynas Gucevičius

Lithuanian architect

Laurynas Gucevičius (Wawrzyniec Gucewicz; 1753–1798) was a Polish Lithuanian architect from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and all of his designs were built there. In his youth he travelled to Italy and Paris and other countries in Western Europe, where he studied architecture under the notable contemporary neo classical French architects, Jacques Germain Soufflot and Claude Nicolas Ledoux. Later he was appointed professor at the Jesuit Academy of Vilnius, the predecessor of the University of Vilnius. Among the best known of his works are the Vilnius Cathedral, the Vilnius Town Hall and the summer palace of bishops in Verkiai. The monumentality of forms and volume, the harmony with surroundings and a special treatment of antique architectural forms are the characteristics of his style.

He was born in the village of Migonys near Kupiškis, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His father was a Lithuanian peasant, Simonas Masiulis. He was baptized as Laurynas Masiulis. In 1773 he joined the Academy of Vilnius. He studied engineering, attended the lectures on architecture held by Marcin Knackfus. Around that time, he also became a missionary monk. He graduated in 1775 and in the following year received a royal scholarship from King Stanisław August Poniatowski. Along with a large number of other young Polish artists and architects of the time (among them Chrystian Piotr Aigner, Szymon Bogumił Zug, Stanisław Zawadzki, Efraim Szreger and Jakub Kubicki), he went to Rome, where he spent a year studying classical architecture. In the following years he travelled through the countries of Western Europe, where he attended lectures on architecture and learned from the works of the most renowned architects of the time. He visited France, Denmark, Sweden and various German states. In 1789 Gucevičius became a professor of architecture and topography at the Artillery and Engineering Corps' School of Vilnius. In 1794 he also returned to his alma mater, where he became a professor of civilian architecture

Around that time Gucevičius created the most renowned of his works. First was the new town hall of Vilnius, completed around 1799. He also constructed a similar, yet smaller town hall in Widze near Bratslav (modern Vidzy, Belarus). Between 1777 and in 1801 he worked to rebuild the Vilnius Cathedral (which had undergone many reconstructions, and had been partially Baroque) in the neoclassical style. It is sometimes said that his reconstruction of the cathedral, modelled after a Roman temple, pre dated the work of Thomas Hamilton and James Playfair, two notable Scottish architects to introduce classicism in the United Kingdom. He is credited with a number of other projects, although their actual authorship is not documented. Among them is the palace of the Tyzenhaus family in Rokiškis (completed in 1801), the reconstruction of the castle in Raudonė for its contemporary owners, the Olędzki (Olendzki) h. Rawicz family, and the manor house in Čiobiškis. He is also thought to have prepared designs of palaces for other notable magnate families of the time, including Radziwiłł, Sapieha, Pac, Chomiński and Scypion, Additionally, he designed several merchant houses in Kretinga In his last will he dedicated all of his projects to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and some of the surviving sketches and designs are currently held in the library of Warsaw University.

The architect's life and creations inspired Lithuanian poet Justinas Marcinkevičius to write the play The Cathedral.