Fischer von Erlach, Johann Bernhard

FISCHER VON ERLACH, JOHANN BERNHARD. - Architect, b. in Graz in 1656, d. in Vienna on 5 April 1723. He is the greatest of the Austrian architects of the Baroque period. Having come to Italy young, he was, in Rome, presumably a pupil of Carlo Fontana, but he also studied with particular attention the works of Bernini and above all those of Borromini. In 1687 he was in Vienna in the service of the emperor Joseph I, then he asserted his own qualities as an architect by building the Castle of Frain in Moravia, that of Engelhartstellen and then the imperial mausoleum of Graz.

In 1693 he began to work in Salzburg for the count of Thun, archbishop of the diocese, in whose service he remained until the death of that prelate, which occurred in 1709, building among other things the four Salzburg churches of the Most Holy Trinity, of the Hospital of St. John, of the Ursulines and the Collegiate church, which is among his major works. Meanwhile and afterwards, in Vienna, he worked on the construction of other buildings, some also of a civil character such as the very famous Castle of Schönbrunn, brought to completion after his death by the architect N. Pacassi, the Strattmann-Windischgrätz Palace, that of Prince Eugene, later the Ministry of Finance, that of the Schönborn etc. However in Vienna his most characteristic architecture, and the one that best allows the Italian elements of his culture to be identified, is the church of St. Charles Borromeo, brought to completion, after the death of its designer, by his son Joseph Imanuel F. v. E. (b. in Vienna on 19 Sept. 1693, d. there on 29 June 1742), himself an architect of great worth and to whom was also entrusted - among other things - the completion of the building of the national Library which had already been begun by his father in 1722.