Jiří Kroupa : Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt - Part 1

As part of the seminar of the Friends of Fine Arts and Architecture Club, on Tuesday January 22, 2019 at 5:00 PM, the first part of a lecture by Professor Jiří Kroupa on one of the most significant Central European Baroque architects, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, will take place in the auditorium A310 at the Faculty of Architecture VUT, Poříčí 5, Brno.

Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt (*1668 Genoa +1745 Vienna) was an extraordinarily influential Baroque architect, a student of Carlo Fontana, contemporary and competitor of the famous Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, who settled in Vienna in 1694. During his stay in Italy, he became thoroughly acquainted with the most progressive architecture of the time, particularly the works of Francesco Borromini and Guarino Guarini, subsequently conveying the remarkable spatial solutions of their buildings to the Central European environment. It is also noteworthy that it was presumably with Hildebrandt that Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer spent his apprenticeship years. He became the imperial court engineer as early as 1701; however, he was appointed the chief imperial builder only after Fischer's death in 1723. A key stage in Hildebrandt's work for our region is represented mainly by the pair of Vienna churches, Maria Treu and St. Peter, which served as a model for the sacral buildings of Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer (the Church of St. Wenceslaus in Počaply), along with the unfinished, monumentally fortified reconstruction of the Göttweig Monastery (from 1719), which influenced the reconstruction of the monastery in Chotěšov by Jakub Auguston Jr. and Petr Pavel Columbani. In castle architecture, he developed French influences, and his castle buildings served as a significant source of inspiration for Central European profane architecture.

Prof. PhDr. Jiří Kroupa, CSc. (*1951 Brno) is a professor at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno, where he has been teaching the Art History Seminar since 1988 and is engaged in the history of architecture of the early modern period. In 1975, he graduated in art history from the Faculty of Arts MU and subsequently worked as a specialist at the Museum of Kroměříž in Kroměříž (1976-78) and in the graphic collections of the Moravian Gallery in Brno (1978-87).

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