Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Baroque - Elegantly Feral
According to one 19th-century Swiss art historian, Jacob Burckhardt, the baroque period
and the Renaissance period that preceded it speak roughly the same language. The differ-
ence, however, is that the baroque speaks a dialect that has gone feral. The height of the
baroque era of building was in the late 17th and early 18th century in Austria. It only
moved into full swing once the Ottoman Turks had been beaten back from the gates of Vi-
enna during the Turkish siege of 1683. It took the graceful columns and symmetry of the
Renaissance and added elements of the grotesque, the burlesque and the saccharine.
A good example of this 'feral dialect' spoken by baroque architecture is the Karlskirche
(Church of St Charles) in Vienna. Here you find towering, decorative columns rising up on
Karlsplatz and a stunning cupola painted with frescoes. The church was instigated by the
Habsburg Charles VI following the plague of 1713, and it was dedicated to St Charles
Borromeo, who succoured the victims of plague in Italy. It is arguably the most beautiful
of the baroque masterpieces.
'Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the baroque is over.' Ernest Hemingway, inadvertently
revealing to us what he thought of baroque architecture (and also why he wrote about bullfights and not,
say, Austrian churches).
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach
The architect who shaped the Karlskirche was Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach
(1656-1723). Fischer von Erlach was Austria's first, and possibly the country's greatest,
architect of the baroque era. He was born in Graz, the capital of Styria, and began working
as a sculptor in his father's workshop before travelling to Rome in 1670 and spending well
over a decade studying baroque styles in Italy. He returned to Austria in 1686 and in 1693
completed one of his earliest works in the capital, the magnificent Pestsäule, a swirling,
golden, towering pillar commemorating the end of the plague.
Fischer von Erlach's greatest talent during these early years was his interior decorative
work, and in Graz he was responsible for the baroque interior of the Mausoleum of Ferdin-
and II. In 1689 he began tutoring the future Kaiser Joseph I (1678-1711) in architecture,
before being appointed court architect for Vienna in 1694. Despite his high standing and
connections to the royal court, he found himself without commissions, however, and
