Themed thread
The Baschenis family
A family of painters from Bergamo at work in the valleys for generations.
They came from Val Brembana and frescoed half of Trentino. In Valli del Noce their passage can be recognised in half a dozen places far apart from one another, and the names change from generation to generation: Giovanni and Battista at Segonzone in 1473, Giovanni at Cunevo in 1490, Angelo at Flavon around 1485.
At Mestriago you can also read their discontinuity: Giovanni and Battista left a job half finished, and between 1516 and 1518 it was Simone, of the same family, who completed it. A work site taken up again by a relative two generations later says a lot about how these workshops operated.
Not all the frescoes had the same luck: those at Cunevo were damaged in the sixteenth century by the construction of a new vault, and came back to light only with the restoration of 1923.
17 places where you meet it
- Castel ValerVal di NonIt stands at 594 metres on a hill above Tassullo, in the municipality of Ville d'Anaunia, with a moat to the north and, to the south, the drop into the gorge of the rio Paglia, which over the centuries has several times eroded the slope.
- Chiesa dei Santi Fabiano e SebastianoValle di PejoThe church of Celledizzo appears for the first time in a document of 1319.
- Chiesa dei Santi Fabiano e SebastianoVal di NonThe age of this church was not known, and it was established by studies from the second half of the twentieth century on the fresco cycles linked to the Baschenis family: it is that research which sets the fifteenth century as the time limit for its construction.
- Chiesa dei Santi Filippo e GiacomoValle di PejoThe first documentary mention of the church of Cogolo dates from 1281, and about fifty years later, in 1322, that original church was rebuilt: this is recorded by the epigraph on the north side.
- Chiesa dei Santi Filippo e GiacomoVal di NonIt was frescoed in 1473 by the brothers Giovanni and Battista Baschenis, which dates it better than any document: it already existed before that year.
- Chiesa della Natività di MariaVal di SoleKnown in the village as the church of the Madonna delle Grazie, it was consecrated in 1474 at the end of a radical restoration: the original building was already mentioned in a document of 1265, and traces of it can be recognised in a walled-up window on the east façade.
- Chiesa della Natività di MariaVal di NonFew churches tell of such a long stratification. On the site, perhaps already in the 1st century and more probably in the 4th, stood a Roman watchtower; the excavations found the remains of another building dating to within the 6th century, and of an early church dating to within the 10th, oriented to the east, with the graveyard at the back.
- Chiesa della Natività di San Giovanni BattistaVal di NonThe pieve of Flavon appears in documents from 1242, and in 1290 a priest of the church is mentioned.
- Chiesa di San BartolomeoValle di PejoThree different accounts circulate about its origins. One has it founded by miners in the medieval period, another built by families who had taken refuge here to escape an epidemic. The most established says that it belonged to a village called Pegaia, swept away around 1431 by an avalanche or a landslide that spared only the small shrine.
- Chiesa di San CristoforoVal di SoleThe church of Ortisé was built in the fifteenth century and enriched with decorations attributed to Giovanni and Battista Baschenis, or to painters of their school, within the first decade of the sixteenth century.
- Chiesa di San LorenzoVal di NonNo document survives for the construction, but Cunevo was home to a feudal family that supplied clergy to the diocese (Adelpreto di Cunevo is a canon of Trento in 1254), and the restoration of 1993 found remains that suggest an earlier chapel.
- Chiesa di San LorenzoVal di SoleThe oldest document that mentions this church dates from 1264, but a fragment of Carolingian-era fresco on the presbytery shows that the building already existed in the ninth century.
- Chiesa di Sant'AgataVal di SoleFirst mentioned in 1244, it was partly rebuilt and enlarged in Gothic forms in the second half of the fifteenth century.
- Chiesa di Sant'Agnese in ColleVal di NonCemetery church of Tres, a hamlet of Predaia, first mentioned in 1307.
- Chiesa di Sant'UdalricoVal di NonIt stands in Corte Inferiore, a hamlet of Rumo, and is a subsidiary church of the parish church of Marcena.
- Chiesa di Santa Caterina in ColleVal di SoleThis church was built before the pastoral visit of Cardinal Bernardo Clesio in 1537.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria MaddalenaVal di SoleThe presence of a place of worship at Cusiano is documented as early as 1368, and from 1470 it is known that Giovanni and Battista, of the important Baschenis workshop originally from the Valle Averara, worked on its decoration.
The links between these places come from our entries, where every fact has been checked against the sources. The entries are written one at a time: this thread will grow with them.