(b Bissone, 10 Sept 1623; d Bissone, 9 March 1685). Painter. He was the son of Giovanni Giacomo Tencala, an architect and stuccoist who is mentioned in Poland in 1627 and was probably the architect of that name who built the parish church of the Assumption in Valtice (Ger. Feldsberg). On stylistic grounds it is probable that Carpoforo trained as a painter in Lombardy. There are perceptible links between his work and that of Giovanni Stefano Danedi (1608-89), Giuseppe Danedi, Giovanni Battista Lampugnani ( fl 1619-53), Giovanni Francesco Lampugnani ( fl 1619-44) and Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, but at the same time it must be presumed that he was also familiar with Bolognese and Roman painting from the first half of the 17th century, and with 16th-century Venetian painting. He is first mentioned in 1655 among the Italian artists working with Philiberto Luchese at the P?lffy castle at Cerveny Kamen and then in 1659 at Lambach Abbey. The Dowager Empress Eleonora Gonzaga (1630-86), for whom he decorated the Leopold wing (1665; destr.) within the Hofburg in Vienna, was one of his most important patrons, who also included members of the upper aristocracy and the clergy in Vienna, Moravia, West Hungary and Styria. The groups of mythological frescoes at the palaces of Petronell (1666-7), Eisenstadt (1665-71; see ESTERH?ZY), Trautenfels (1670) and N?mest nad Oslavou (1674) are among his most important works. In Vienna he produced frescoes for the Servite church, the church 'Zu den neun Engelsch?ren' and both the Franciscan and Dominican churches (1676). From 1662 to 1665 he worked in Bergamo on S Maria del Giglio, the Palazzo Terzi and the Seminario Nuova (formerly Palazzo Solza). Of the extensive work carried out in Moravia for Prince-Bishop Karl II of Liechtenstein-Castelcorn, only the paintings in the so-called rotunda at Kromer?z have survived. His frescoes (1679-85) for the nave and choir of Passau Cathedral are notable for constituting the first time north of the Alps that a ceiling painting extended over more than one bay without the divisions formed by stucco framing. His work at Passau and in S Carpoforo, Bissone (1682-5), was completed by his son-in-law, Carlo Antonio Bussi.
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