Castello del Buonconsiglio monumenti e collezioni provinciali

Giuseppe Alberti (1640-1716)

Giuseppe Alberti, born in Tesero in 1640, was automatically destined to follow a clerical career, as in most large families of that time. A self-taught person, he demonstrated artistic talent already at an early age, signing an altarpiece in 1661 for a chapel in Montagnaga di Piné. He followed courses in medicine and law at the University of Padua from 1664 to 1667, interrupting his studies to wholly dedicate himself to art. His artistic background was mainly formed by the followers of late 16th Venetian painting, which he was able to enrich with a period of learning from Tiziano’s colouring in Venice, until establishing his own artistic maturity and style. Upon his return to Trento he carried out a series of works, among which, the altarpiece of Saint Vigilius (signed and dated 1673) and the altarpiece that is currently visible at Buonconsiglio Castle featuring the little blessed Simonino (1677), commissioned by Prince-Bishop Alberti Poia who received the prestigious responsibility of the diocese in that same year. The Prince-Bishop became Giuseppe Alberti’s main patron, for both artistic and architectural works.

The artist also spent time in Rome where he was able to study the most important monuments of the time. As he was commissioned by the Prince-Bishop to work on the Crucifix Chapel in the Cathedral of Trento, the artist left Rome in 1682 to return home. He took over the work that held him personally responsible for the magnificent internal decoration, especially for the stucco (a part of which was subsequently destroyed) and for the paintings on the gores of the vaults.

Alberti was also responsible for the architectonic interventions relating to the church of Pressano, for which he reproposed the same structural lines used in the Crucifix Chapel.

In 1688 he worked on the frescoes of the Trionfo della fede and Minerva che caccia i vizi all’inferno in the two rooms on the first floor of the new Giunta Albertina, built to connect the Magno Palazzo to Castelvecchio. Both allegorical paintings, in which Alberti attempts spectacular effects seen “looking upwards”, shortly follow the analogous frescoed cycles in Palazzo Leoni Montanari in Vicenza.

The death of Prince-bishop Alberti in 1689 marked Alberti’s artistic crisis, as the artist obviously suffered the loss of his patron, and therefore decided to retire to Cavalese in the Fiemme Valley. In the 1690s, he carried out numerous paintings that became difficult to distinguish as his own from those of his students painting around him. In the last phase of his work, Alberti can undoubtedly be considered responsible for establishing the so-called “scuola fiemmese” (the Fiemme Valley school of art), forming and working with artists such as Michelangelo Unterperger and Paul Troger.