The importance of Italian artists for the promulgation of both Ancient traditions and Mediterranean culture to the lands north of the Alps can hardly be overstated. For this reason, it is disappointing to note the long period of lack of interrest within scholarly circles for a monographic treatment of their cultural mission. It was apparently not clear to us that the works of visiting Italian artists belonged rather to the professional jurisdiction of the host country, and not so much to the charge of the regional researchers of Lombardy, Tessino or Tuscany, despite the contributions these experts have made towards the understanding of the personal and artistic relationships among the migrant artists. Thus, the works of the Austro-Italians has remained a foreign art on foreign soil. Austrian researchers of the Baroque period considered Filiberto Luchese from Melide and Giovanni Pietro Tencalla from Bissone foreigners; for their Italian or Swiss collegues, however, the works of these artists were grouped with Austrian art history.

Some art historians, however, have attempted to free the Italian artists from their biographical and artistic anonymity. Specialized articles in art reference works are elegant proof of this fact. The structural arrangement of the articles in the old Thieme-Becker, whose latest edition, incidentally, seems like a gigantic fossil in the age of computers, leaves a lot to be desired, especially concerning the Italian artists who worked in Austria, the individual peculiarities of whom are sometimes accorded little attention. At first glance, we do find here basic biographical information on the artists and a list of their main works. But what is often missing are references to the sociological structure of the artistic milieu, as well as a reference to the relationships between artist and patron. As we will see, this information is of vital importance to us.