Guido Nincheri (1885–1973)

Painter, stained-glass artist, decorator and architect, Guido Nincheri was a remarkable man with a wide range of talents. Through the extent, the diversity and the quality of his achievements, he made a lasting and significant contribution to the decoration of Canadian churches during the first half of the 20th century. A talented muralist, he mastered buon fresco, a technique of painting on fresh plaster that was rarely used in North America. His exceptional legacy, which includes the complete decors of renowned churches, murals and thousands of stained-glass windows, represents a remarkable contribution to the Italian tradition in religious art during this period.

Born in Italy and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Nincheri was already an accomplished architect, painter and decorator by the time he immigrated to Montréal in 1914. His timing was fortunate. Within a decade of his arrival, a period of urban expansion began throughout the continent that resulted in the design and construction of many Roman Catholic churches, especially in Montréal. He came to specialize as a muralist of religious subjects and a designer of stained-glass windows. He obtained his first large contract in 1921: the painted decoration of the Church of Saint-Viateur in Outremont. Two years later, he started the decoration of the Church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense, which is closely associated with Montréal’s Italian community. It is now a national historic site, recognized in part for its interior fresco decoration by Nincheri.

In 1925, he set up his own workshop, and under his guidance, the Nincheri Studio in Montréal produced hundreds of stained-glass windows to decorate dozens of churches in Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes. Nincheri himself excelled in buon fresco. A master of this technique, Nincheri painted frescos on fresh plaster in a number of the churches he decorated in the 1920s and 1930s, notably in the Church of Saint-Léon-de-Westmount, also a national historic site. This church’s interior is considered to be among the most representative of Nincheri’s skill as a decorator and glassmaker. 

In 1940, Nincheri was arrested and interned with hundreds of other Italian Canadians by the federal government during the Second World War. He was released after three months of internment, then moved to the United States, though he remained active in Canada. He oversaw the artistic direction of his Montréal studio until his retirement at the end of the 1960s.

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