Balthasar Neumann
A continuous variety of spatial combinations Balthasar Neumann was quite probably one of the most talented famous architects of the entire European rococo, and he was active in both secular and religious buildings. His strong personality left its mark in the special style of late baroque German architecture, most especially that of Franconia. he fortunate encounter between the still young architect and the Schonborn dynasty of prince bishops led to a fecund period characterized by the construction of splendid buildings and a brilliant artistic life.
The great turning point in his career was the commission to rework the urban layout of the city and the creation of the residence of Wurzburg, for these undertakings put him alongside such leading architects as Johann Dientzenhofer and Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt; the result was a further evolution in Neumann’s architectural style, which was based on the powerful synthesis of traditional Viennese architecture and the new stimuli of French classicism.
A fundamental aspect of his architectural style is the rejection of fantasy used for its own sake; Neumann’s buildings are always based on an ideal combination of organizational force and sensibility for the plastic and the spatial, always within the continuous variety of the figural and structural forms, for which he drew on the most diverse traditions. He turned to the field of sacred architecture most of all in his later career, and in these works he ingeniously combined the basilican plan and the concept of a central space.
At Vierzehnheiligen, his masterpiece, within a luminous and apparently infinite space he composed a biaxial system with a traditional Latin cross achieving a singular synthesis of all the fundamental concepts of baroque ecclesiastical architecture. At the same time he concentrated his work on the double expression of internal space by way of which the structural framework is clearly visible against the exterior wall, which is treated as a neutral surface.
