Federico Bencovich

From Gorve Art (2008):

Bencovich [Bencovic, Bencovitch, Benkovitch; il Dalmatino], Federico [Federichetto; Federiko; Ferigheto; Ferighetto]

(b ? Dalmatia or Venice, ?1677; d Görz [Gorica, now Gorizia], 8 July 1753).

Croatian painter. He belonged to a noble family who originated on the island of Brazza (now Brac) or of Lesina (Hvar) and had possessions in Dalmatia. From c. 1695 he was apprenticed in Carlo Cignani’s Bologna workshop; he assisted Cignani in painting the Assumption of the Virgin (begun 1686) in the chapel of the Madonna del Fuoco in Forlí Cathedral (in situ; for illustration see Cignani, carlo). The classicizing style of his first known independent work, Juno (1707; Forlí, Pal. Foschi), is close to Cignani. While in Venice (1710–16), Bencovich met Lothar Franz von Schönborn (1655–1729), Prince-Bishop of Mainz, for whom he executed works for Schloss Pommersfelden: Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert and the Sacrifice of Iphigenia (both 1715; Pommersfelden, Schloss Weissenstein); the Sacrifice of Isaac (1720; Zagreb, Strossmayer Gal.); and Apollo and Marsyas (untraced). All are intensely dramatic, with elongated figures in a strange, cold light.

In 1717 the artist went to Vienna; by 1724 he was in Milan. A nervous brushstroke is apparent in his altarpieces of this period and later: St Francis of Paola (1724–5; Crema, Trinità); St Pietro Gambacorti of Pisa (1725; Venice, S Sebastiano), from which came his only known engraving; and Pietà with Saints (1740; Borgo San Giacomo, Chiesa del Castello). In 1734 he became court painter to Friedrich Karl von Schönborn (1674–1746), Prince-Bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg. For the Residenz and the Hofkirche in Würzburg he painted Moses and Aaron with the Pharaoh and the Sacrifice of Jephthah (both untraced). His later work used melodramatic effects and lighter colours. Shortly after his protector’s death, Bencovich retired to Gorizia, where he spent his last years in the Palazzo Attems. His work was misunderstood until the art historian Rodolfo Pallucchini revived an interest in it.

Bibliography

DBI

G. Selva: Catalogo dei quadri dei disegni e dei libri della galleria del sig. Conte Algarotti (Venice, after 1776)

L. Donati: ‘Federico Bencovich detto Ferigheto Dalmatino’, Archv Stor. Dalmazia, iv (1927), pp. 106–20

L. Donati: ‘Ancora di Federico Bencovich’, Archv Stor. Dalmazia, viii (1930), pp. 322–50

R. Pallucchini: ‘Federico Bencovich’, Rivista d’arte [prev. pubd as Misc. A.], xiv (1932), pp. 301–20

R. Pallucchini: ‘Contributo alla biografia di Federico Bencovich’, Atti Reale Ist. Ven. Sci., Lett. & A., xciii (1933–4), pp. 1492–511

R. Pallucchini: ‘Profilo di Federico Bencovich’, Crit. A., i/5 (1936), pp. 205–20

R. Pallucchini: La pittura veneziana del settecento (Venice and Rome, 1960), pp. 63–6

R. Pallucchini: Consuntivo su Federico Bencovich: Barocco in Italia e nei paesi slavi del sud (Florence and Venice, 1983)

P. O. Kruckmann: Federico Bencovich, 1677–1753 (Hildesheim, 1988)

Kruno Prijatelj