The BCPCE 2023 Annual Meeting in Bratislava
This year’s meeting of the Research Group for Baroque Ceiling Painting in Central Europe (BCPCE) took place on 13–15 October 2023 in Bratislava. Our kind hostess was Mgr. & Mgr. Art. Barbara Hodásová, Ph.D., Head of the Institute of Art History, Art Research Centre od the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and deserves the warm thanks of all the participating colleagues for the excellently organized meeting.

On the first day of the meeting, a tour of ceiling paintings in Bratislava was on the programme. We had a unique opportunity to visit the representative premises of the President of the Slovak Republic, the Government of the Slovak Republic and the National Council of the Slovak Republic, which are not open to the public. We saw the Presidential Palace (former Grassalkovich’s Palace) and the Government Office of the Slovak Republic (former so-called Summer Archbishop’s Palace). The ceiling paintings in the chapels are preserved in these buildings. Especially the paintings in the chapel of the Archbishop’s Palace are an excellent example of the quadrature painting by Antonio Galli-Bibiena (1740, together with Josef Bernhard Krinner).

The highlight of the first day was undoubtedly the tour of the Renaissance loggia, preserved in the premises of Bratislava Castle. This unique monument is now the subject of research by Slovak colleagues. Their project At the castle and underneath was presented by Barbara Hodásová the following day at a meeting of the group held at the castle in Smolenice.

In Smolenice presented their current research projects also Martin Mádl together with Michaela Šeferisová Loudová (Baroque Ceiling Painting: Between Theory and Praxis) and Berthold Kreβ (Iconobase – a new concept for the iconographic cataloguing of ceiling paintings).

The afternoon program of the second day included a visit to the Červený Kamen Castle, where we saw the murals of Carpoforo Tencalla created in 1655. The paintings in the sala terrene, the chapel and the rooms of the piano nobile are probably the very first surviving individual works by this northern Italian painter. Tencalla, originally from Bissone, was recommended to the commissioner Nicholas IV. Pálffy, probably by the architect Filiberto Luchese, who was carrying out the conversion of the medieval fortress of Červený Kameň into a representative residence (villa in fortezza).

The last stop was the pilgrimage church in Šaštín. The Basilica of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, under the patronage of Archbishop Imrich Esterházy of Esztergom, was one of the most important pilgrimage places of the Habsburg Monarchy. Thanks to his care, between 1755 and 1757 the church was decorated with top-quality paintings, most notably the ceiling paintings of Jean Joseph Chamant, a continuation of the “Bibiena” style of quadratura painting, who was assisted by other important mid-18th century painters, Johann Lucas Kracker and Josef Ignaz Mildorfer.

We thank all the members and partners of the BCPCE group for their participation in the meeting, discussions and comments about the frescoes and under the frescoes and we look forward to other similar events.

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Michaela Seferisova Loudova (November 2, 2023). About the Frescoes and under the Frescoes. BCPCE. Retrieved June 15, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/lw6t