The Ecclesiastical Rococo in Austria, Bohemia, and Germany

Italian Precedent Transformed

St. Charles Borromeus, Vienna, by J.B.Fischer von Erlach, 1713-15

St. Charles Borromeus

S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 1565, by Andrea Palladio

Is it rococo or baroque?

Architecture in the Austro-Hungarian empire after the Thirty Years’ War often exhibited the qualities of “Machtkunst.”

St. Nicholas on the Small Side, Prague (Bohemia)

1702-51 designed by

Christoph Dientzenhofer,

dome completed by

Killian Ignaz Dientzenhofer

Is it rococo or baroque?

Jesuit Church of St. Nicholas on the Small Side, Prague

Church of Il Gesu, Rome

The curvilinearity of the illusionistic paintings in combination with the actual curvilinear rhythms of the architecture create a kind of warpage of the space.

The Asam Brothers at Weltenburg and Rohr

Religious Experience Evoked

through Material

The Benedictine Abbey Church of Sts. Martin and George at

Weltenburg (Bavaria)

1716-1751 by Cosmas Damian Asam with Egid Quirin Asam

The façade of the abbey church

Former Augustinian Abbey Church of the Assumption of the

Virgin at Rohr (Bavaria)

1717-19 by Cosmas Damian Asam with Egid Quirin Asam

The Pilgrimage Church of the Fourteen Saints

(“Vierzehnheiligen”) (Bavaria)

1742ff by Balthasar Neumann