Big Bummer! Ancestry detective work is so difficult and sometimes sends you down totally wrong paths and thanks to Facebook I announce those wrong paths! Today I connected with Father Orsulak at St. Peters RCC Church in Reading. It turns out that the beautiful murals in St. Peters AND the ceilings at Stirling Mansion were done by a German fresco church artist who lived in Reading, but NOT our great-great-grandfather, Philip Igle. The artist was Berthold Imhoff who also ran a fresco business from Reading (how many German fresco painters can a small city support?) Imhoff & Igles business would have overlapped for a short time but it seems that Igle was most active in the 1880s & 1890s whereas Imhoff was most active in Reading in the 1900s & 1910s. I do have a long list of church fresco commissions that Igle completed but dont know if any of them still are in tact. Interestingly, Igle painted one church, the Lutheran Church of Myerstown, in 1885. The same church is listed as one of Imhoffs fresco painting from 25 years later, so I wonder if Imhoff worked over Igles paintings?
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 03:47:41 +0000
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