North of the Alps and to the East: Central Europe and Russia

Reconstruction after the Thirty Years' War

The second great market for the lake masters opened north of the Alps after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Thirty Years' War had destroyed towns, churches and monasteries across the Empire. The Catholic princes, prince-bishops and abbots of southern Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Poland rebuilt them in the new Italian manner. They lacked trained local builders who could execute vaults, domes and stucco decoration in the Roman style. They therefore turned to the Italian-speaking masters from the southern Alps, whom contemporaries north of the Alps simply called Italians, while the same men were known as Lombards in Venice and Rome, as luganesi in Turin and as antelami in Genoa. The label made no distinction between the masters of the lakes of Lugano and Como and those of the Graubünden valleys of Mesolcina and Calanca.¹ For about a century, from the 1650s to the 1750s, these masters dominated large parts of Catholic building in Central Europe until they were displaced by local masters trained in their own workshops, such as the Asam brothers, the Zimmermann brothers and the Wessobrunn stucco-workers. The masters worked in teams recruited in the home villages and led by a capomastro or by a contractor who negotiated with the client. A team for a major church typically included masons, plasterers, stucco-workers and a painter for the frescoes, all of whom could come from the same few villages. Because the teams returned home for the winter, a single family might work for several clients in successive seasons, with the reputation built on one site leading to commissions on the next.² The network was supported by marriages between families from the Luganese villages, the Val d'Intelvi and the Mesolcina, whose members met on the same building sites across the Empire.

Vienna, Passau and the Habsburg lands

In Vienna, Filiberto Lucchese of Melide (1606–1666) became imperial court architect and designed the Leopoldine wing of the Hofburg, built from 1660. The wing was later rebuilt and raised by a storey under Giovanni Pietro Tencalla of Bissone (1629–1702).³ The Tencalla family also produced the fresco painter Carpoforo Tencalla (1623–1685), who worked in Vienna, in Moravia and at Passau, and Costante Tencalla, who served the kings of Poland in Warsaw.

The cathedral of Passau, rebuilt after the town fire of 1662, is a characteristic work of this international lake network. The architect was Carlo Lurago from Pellio in the Val d'Intelvi, the stucco decoration was executed by Giovanni Battista Carlone of Scaria and his workshop. The frescoes were painted by Carpoforo Tencalla of Bissone.⁴ In Upper Austria Carlo Antonio Carlone (c. 1635–1708), also of the Scaria branch, built or rebuilt the abbeys of St Florian, Garsten and Schlierbach, while other members of his family worked as stucco-workers and painters in Swabia and Franconia, among them Diego Francesco Carlone (1674–1750) and the painter Carlo Innocenzo Carlone (1686– 1775).⁵

Notes

1. Laura Damiani Cabrini, "Maestranze artistiche", Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version of 20 March 2015, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/047823/ ("nördlich der Alpen bezeichnete man sie als Italiener, in Venedig und Rom als Lombarden, in Turin als Luganesen und in Genua als maestri antelami "). ↩
2. Laura Damiani Cabrini, "Maestranze artistiche", Dizionario storico della Svizzera (DSS), version of 20 March 2015, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/047823/. ↩
3. DSS, "Lucchesi, Filiberto", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/024540/; Ivano Proserpi, "Tencalla", DSS, version of 24 August 2012, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/047924/; on the rebuilding of the wing see Wikipedia, "Hofburg", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofburg (used as a last resort). ↩
4. Wikipedia, "Passau Cathedral", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passau_Cathedral (used as a last resort); Ivano Proserpi, "Tencalla, Carpoforo", DSS, version of 17 July 2009, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/022671/. ↩
5. Wikipedia, "Carlo Antonio Carlone", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Antonio_Carlone, and "Carlone (Künstlerfamilie)", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlone_(K%C3%BCnstlerfamilie) (both used as a last resort), which treat the Carlone of Scaria and of Rovio as separate families and list the works of Diego Francesco Carlone at Weingarten, Ansbach and Ludwigsburg and of Carlo Innocenzo Carlone at Weingarten, Ansbach and Ludwigsburg. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.