The grandiose altarpiece located behind the main altar of the Abbey Cathedral of St. Tecla (oil on canvas measuring 6.84 x 3.94 meters, almost 27 square meters) "Saint Tecla praying to God the Father" is a work by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770).
The altarpiece was commissioned by the Magnificent Community of Este with a resolution dated June 29, 1758, and was delivered on December 24, 1759, in the presence of the author and his son Giandomenico.
This extraordinary painting is recognized by most critics as Tiepolo’s masterpiece among his religious works. It depicts the prayer of Saint Tecla, the patroness of Este, as she gathers the sufferings and anguish of the people of Este and implores God the Father for liberation from the plague.
The epidemic broke out in Este in 1630-1631 and seems to have caused the death of more than 3,400 people out of a population of about 14 thousand inhabitants.
God the Father, surrounded in heaven by his angels, dispels with his strength the shadow of death and evil represented by the dark figure moving away to the lower left. In the background, the city of Este is recognizable with some of its monuments, the Cathedral, the bell tower, the Prince's Palace on the hill, the Carrara Castle, and the Civic Tower of Porta Vecchia. The departure of the plague due to the beneficial action of the Father seems to offer greater brightness to the landscape.
In the lower part of the painting, Saint Tecla appears: she is not portrayed in a triumphant posture but in humble prayer with her hands gathered and her eyes directed to the Father. Close to the Saint are several figures showing the pain brought to the city by the plague epidemic: a little girl weeps for her mother who is now dead, the despair of a man with his head in his hands, the fear of another figure who protects himself by covering his mouth and nose with his hand.
This painting was preceded by a model (80×45 cm) that is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The peculiarity of this altarpiece is that it is tensioned on a curved frame that follows the contour of the apse. The first restoration dates back to 1893, followed by those in 1923, 1929, and 1961, until the most recent one, started in 2012, which restored the canvas to its original placement and position on a curved frame (as conceived by the author), cleaned of all deposits from the last three hundred years, on the eve of Christmas 2020.
