Jana Zapletalová

Nově nalezené malby Carpofora Tencally v Olomouci

When Karl of Liechtenstein-Castlecorn was appointed Bishop of Olomouc following the Thirty Years War, the city experienced a boom in construction activity, and from the second half of the 1660s a number of highly talented artists who had worked in the Imperial Court in Vienna and for the high-ranking nobility in Central Europe began arriving in Moravia. Carpoforo Tencalla (Bissone, 1623-1685) was a pre-eminent figure in the field of painting and in his day he was regarded as the reviver of fresco painting in the Trans-Alpine region. Although Carpoforo Tencalla had worked for Bishop Karl of Liechtenstein-Castelcorn for many years and had painted murals for him at his residences in Olomouc and Kroměříž, in Olomouc only a fragment of his work survived - one small decorated room in the Palace of the Archbishop. It remains unclear whether Carpoforo was the author or contributed to the murals painted in the pavilion at Květná Garden in Kroměříž and at the castle in Mírov. He has recently been identified as the author of the murals painted in one of the canonical residences of the Olomouc chapter. Despite the fact that of the original painting and stucco decorations at this residence only two fields depicting putti have survived, these paintings are the second surviving example identified to date of Carpoforo's artistry as a painter in Olomouc. The paintings were commissioned by Jiří Bedřich, Freeman of Salburg, who was appointed canon of the Olomouc chapter in 1666 on the condition that he embellish the residence that was granted to him for his use. During this period the Freeman of Salburg put together a substantial collection of paintings by old masters and he managed to get Tencalla, who was very famous and very much in demand at that time, to decorate his residence. The discovered remnants of murals by Carpoforo Tencalla at the Salburg residence show how developed the cultural milieu of the Olomouc chapter was and how refined the level of taste of the person who commissioned the work was, and, last but not least, they point to the significance once held by the Salburg residence and the entire complex of canonical houses in Olomouc.

< back