Carpoforo Tencalla

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Carpoforo Tencalla (or Tencala (10 September 1623 - 9 March 1685) was an influential Swiss-Italian Baroque painter of canvases and frescoes. He is little studied and has come only recently to the attention of art critics. He introduced the style of 17th-century Italian painting with its mythological subjects to Central Europe, reviving the art of fresco on large surfaces.

Apotheosis of St. Dominic
Dominican church, Vienna

[edit] Biography

Tencalla was born in Bissone, in what is now southern Switzerland.

He began his apprenticeship in Lombardy, probably in Milan, Bergamo and Verona, possibly under the master Isodoro Bianchi, related to his mother. Other possibilities are Giovanni Stefano Danedi (1608-1689), Giuseppe Danedi, Giovanni Battista Lampugnani (active between 1619 and 1653) and Carlo Francesco Nuvolone. His works shows also influences from the Bolognese, Roman and Venetian schools.

He began in 1655 as a fresco painter, under the direction of the Italian architect-engineer Filiberto Luchese, in the Pálffy castle at Červený Kameň in Slovakia. Through these paintings he was influential in introducing the Early Baroque style in Central Europe.

An early painting can be found in the Palazzo Terzi in Bergamo. In 1659 he gets a commission from the Benedictine Lambach Abbey in Austria for a number of frescoes in the presbitary of the monastery church. In 1660-61 he decorated the palace of the Count von Abensperg and Traun in Vienna. These no longer exist.

In the period 1662-65 he was back in Italy, painting the altar canvas in the San Giacomo church and a fresco for the Palazzo Solza, and the Palazzo Terzi, all in Bergamo.

Between 1665 and 1667 he's back in Vienna decorating the rooms of the new Leopold wing of the Hofburg palace (no longer in existence) and he even became the court painter of Eleonore Gonzaga (1630-1686), widow of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor.

As he became more and more famous, the number of his important patrons grew among the upper clergy and aristocracy in Vienna, Moravia, Styria and Hungary. And he got more and more commissions.

Between 1666-67 he decorated the Petronell castle of the Count Ernst III von Abensperg-Traun with a number of mythological frescoes. A few are left, the others haven been lost in a fire in 1683 during the Battle of Vienna.

The Heiligenkreuz Abbey invited him to decorate their new sacristy. Again these frescoes were lost in a fire in 1683.

Between 1668-69 he decorated several churches in Vienna : the Servites church, Franciscan church, Dominican church. In 1670 he's at work in the hall and the chapel of the Trautenfels castle in the Steiermark, decorating it with mythological frescoes. At about the same year he decorated the Eisenstadt castle of the House of Esterházy

His major works are to be found in Slovakia, Moldavia, Austria, Germany and the Czech republic

In the monasteries of Lambach, Heiligenkreuz
Episcopal palaces of Olmutz.
Episcopal palace of the Prince-Bishop Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn (1664 - 1695) in Kroměříž (or Kremsier) (Moravia): the architect was his brother Giovanni P. Tencalla, who invited him for extensive frescoes and paintings. Only the paintings in the rotunda have survived.
Cathedral of Passau (1679-1685): frescoes for the nave and choir. Here he painted over more than one bay, without being stopped by stucco framings. This was a first north of the Alps.
About 1675 he decorated the apse around the main altar of the Dominican church, Vienna, with two historic paintings of Christian victories, ascribed to power of the Rosary : the Battle of Muret (1213) and the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Tencala also added some paintings on the walls of the side chapels.

After his death in 1685, at Bissone, his son-in-law Carlo Antonio Bussi completed his work at the cathedral of Passau and in the San Carpoforo church in Bissone.

[edit] References

Benezit (1976). Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs. Paris: Librairie Gründ. ISBN 2-7000-0158-3.
Turner, J. (1990). Grove Dictionary of Art. MacMIllan Publishers. ISBN 1-884446-00-0.
(2005) Carpoforo Tencalla 1623-1685. Pittura seicentesca fra Milano e l’Europa Centrale. “catalog of an exhibition in Rancate in the canton Ticino”