Patrick Bade
South German Baroque

Patrick Bade - South German Baroque

- [Judi] Welcome. The Q&A is open, if anybody would like to pop their questions for Patrick for the end of the session under the Q&A. Please don’t raise your hands in the chat because I won’t be able to unmute you. So if you do have a question, please put them into the Q&A. Let’s have a look at the time, Pat. Okay, so Patrick is on at five o'clock. So welcome Patrick and welcome everybody. Patrick, over to you.

• Thank you Judi. Welcome everybody all over the world. Morning, afternoon, evening. Tonight, well for me it’s tonight, we’re going to look at a very spectacular late development of the Baroque style in the German-speaking countries. I put it that way cause there’s no Germany in the 18th century. The concept of a nation, German nation didn’t exist. There were over a 200 little states, Protestant in the north Catholic in the south. And so this part of Europe, Germany and Central Europe, had had a very bad 17th century. There was the unbelievable destruction of the Thirty Years’ War. And then there were all the endless wars of Louis the 14th that didn’t finish until 1713. So this really put German culture back a long way. But after 1713, even though there were of course further wars in the 18th century but nothing quite so terrible, the German culture flourished. We all know, of course, about the music of Bach, Handel, and Mozart. I think that represents one of the greatest cultural peaks in the West, in the history of the West. In the second half of the 18th century, you’ve got the golden age of German literature with Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, people like that. And there is an equivalent flowering in architecture and the visual arts, which is perhaps not quite so well known outside of Germany. It’s…the patronage is conservative. I mean the pat- it’s monasteries, monasteries immensely powerful earning large parts of the land in Catholic Europe, and princely courts rather like the courts of the Italian Renaissance, they’re all in competition with one another, all wanting to outdo each other, which is very reductive for the arts. But this rather conservative patronage leads to an art, which in certain ways is also very conservative.

This is the last hurrah, so to speak, of the Baroque style. It’s also the last hurrah of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which had dominated Europe since the 16th century. You could say that the Bach Cantatas and the Bach Passions are the expression of Reformation record. When I used to do this talk at Christie’s, I always used to begin with this image, which is the Monastery of Melk near to Vienna. And I would accompany it with the Bach Canata “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” it’s to a text of Luther, and it means our God is a mighty fortress, And it has a very military quality to it with blazing trumpets. So these huge energies, initially very destructive energies, that had been generated by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation play themselves out in the 18th century with great music, great architecture, and great art. And it’s the architecture and art I’m talking about tonight is really the art of the Counter-Reformation, got a very propagandistic element to it. It’s trying to win you over to the Catholic faith. So I’m beginning in Austria, and I’m starting with this extraordinary church in Vienna. This is the Karlskirche, it’s dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo, who’s the patron saint of plague victims. I’m quite sure lots of people in the Catholic world are praying to him at the moment and let’s hope he does his best. But, so this church is by an architect called Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. I think Judi has sent out to you a list. I know that people find the German names of the architects and the places quite difficult, but you will have that list. He initially started as a sculptor. Of course, in the 18th century, the one you couldn’t go, you couldn’t train as an architect, you could, there were no places where you could get a profession or training as an architect.

And the two main ways to become an architect were either to start off as a sculptor or stone mason or as an engineer. And Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach started off as a sculptor. You probably won’t be surprised to know because this church has such a sort of dynamic sculptural quality to it. He spent 10 years in Rome. And much of what I’m looking at tonight is ultimately dependent on Roman Baroque, particularly Bernini. Now, he was a rather self-consciously erudite architect. In 1705, he published a book with the very wordy title “Entwurff einer historischen Architectur: in Abbildung unterschiedener berühmten Gebäude, des Alterthums, und fremder Völcker,” which means sketch of historical architecture in pictures of various famous buildings from antiquity and foreign peoples. And it tries to give you a survey of all the great architecture of history all over the world. Actually, every, it doesn’t matter really, whether it’s a Chinese pagoda or a Greek temple. It all ends up looking a bit like this. It all ends up rather Austrian Baroque. But I emphasise that because this is a building which is full of learned references. There are references to Solomon’s temple. There are references to St. Peter’s in Rome. There are references to Islamic mosques. You know, these two great columns which suggest minarets. And there’s all sorts of rather arcane symbolism in the building. I mean the two- Trajan’s Column, obviously with the these reliefs rounding around the columns. They also refer to the Pillars of Hercules. So therefore, that is referencing Habsburg’s claims to the Americas.

And I wonder how many Americans listening in know that these two columns have the same symbolism as the two bars that run through the dollar sign, to the Pillars of Hercules. So this is- I’m going to show you some more pictures from different angles of this very, very extraordinary building. This is his, from his own book that I just mentioned, his illustration of this building. And he also gives you a cross section of the building and a plan. And the plan is interesting because you realise that the facade is pure theatre. It’s just a piece of scenery. The facade has nothing to do with the church behind it. The church behind it is, has an no void nave. He, I think the reason for this is that it, the Karlskirche rather like Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona Rome, faces a very long, wide space. So I think he wants that facade to, let’s go back to it for a second, to really embrace the wide space of the, of the church. Now this church was started in 1716, in a moment where the Habsburg Empire was on a high, there had been a terrible plague. It was the last plague to hit Vienna and that passed. So they were celebrating that, and the church was, that’s why it’s dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo. They had defeated the Turks. From this time onwards, the Turks were never really as a serious threat. They were constantly pushed back. And of course they were on the winning side in the War of the Spanish Succession. And that gave the Habsburg Empire important possessions in the Netherlands, and Italy, and so on. What they couldn’t know, of course, is that this would be the last victorious war in Austrian history. I mean the Austrians have the most incredibly, incredible unbroken record, pretty well, for defeating battle from the early 18th century till the mid 20th century.

I mean, you could claim that they’re on the winning side of the Napoleonic wars, but of course they didn’t win the battles. It was the Prussians and the British who won the battles. So still in Austria, this is the extraordinary Monastery of Melk towering over the river Danube. You can take a day trip or even a half day trip from Vienna. The other way to see it is coming, if you travel by Untergrundbahn from Munich to Vienna, suddenly this incredible building, it’s sort of heart-stopping moment when it rises up in front of you. It’s on a promontory overlooking the Danube. And you can see and it’s sort of, the shape is very carefully tailored to the shape of the promontory. You can see there’s an arch in the middle. And the theory was that boatmen on the Danube, the Danube of course was the major thoroughfare of Europe from west to east, so it was a lot of river traffic, and theoretically the boatman who were unable to attend mass could look up and could actually see through that open archway, through the open doors of the church, up to the high altar where the host was kept in the tabernacle. Now these- the architect of this monastery is a man called Jakob Prandtauer. And it had been a mediaeval monastery, but it was completely rebuilt from 1702 up to about 1730. So there seems to been the most incredible outburst of energy to rebuild, refurbish every church in the Catholic German-speaking countries in the 18th century. It’s a bit like in England. I mean, there is not a church in England from John o’ Groats to Land’s End that wasn’t refurbished or rebuilt in the Victorian period.

So in Germany, you, I mean, sometimes of course churches were re-refurbished. I mean, the gothic churches that had gone Baroque in the 18th century, were in the 19th century they went back to being gothic again. But it’s so common, this Baroque makeover, there’s even a verb for it in German, which is “barockisieren” to Baroque-ize. And German is such a wonderful, flexible language. You can take any name, any noun, and you can make it into a verb. So I could take Wendy and Judi, and I can make them into verbs. So it would be “Wendysieren” would be to Wendy. And if you, you can then conjugate that verb and “Ich bin gewendesieren worden” would be I have been Wendyed. So there’s a lot of this Baroque. I’ll talk a bit more about this Baroqueisan in a minute. Now, these monasteries, of course, they’ve travelled a long way from the original ideas, ideals of monasticism, which were of austerity and severity. There’s nothing austere or severe. They’re incredibly lavish and incredibly palatial. So these monasteries were wealthy. They were important politically. They were important culturally. They were great centres of learning. And also they actually did function as palaces for the Habsburg family. Important people who travelled around could stay in appropriately palatial circumstances. So in any one of these great monasteries, there will be what they will call either Kaisersaal, the Imperial Hall, or Marmorsaal, which would be the Marble Hall.

This is the Marmorsaal in Melk with these wonderful atlantes, these male caryatid figures, very baroque. I remember Michael Frame, doing a very funny programme, very witty, amazing TV programme. Wonder if it’s still around on Vienna. And talking about all, all these baroque, these very muscular male figures that seemed- holding up the entablature, they always seem to be moaning and groaning and complaining. The other point to make about this of course, is that there is probably no marble in this room at all, except for the floors and for the bases of the columns. Obviously the bases are going to get more wear and tear. So they tend to be real marble when they could afford it. This is all fake marble. This is scagliola, which is obviously cheaper than real marble. Can you imagine at the cost of having pilasters as big as this made out of real marble and the difficulty of finding the marble and bringing it? So the scagliola is basically it’s gypsum, it’s plaster, and animal glue that is then polished to look like marble. And apart from being cheaper, although not exactly cheap, the great advantage of scagliola is that you can make it any colour you want it to be. So you can get that this, you can get these exquisite colour harmonies. This is just to remind you of Bernini and this idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the fusion of architecture, painting, and sculpture, and also art as theatre.

So that is behind all of this. This is here is the, we move into the great church at Melk. And you can see how people are often shocked going to these churches. They say, “My god, this isn’t a church. This is, this is an Opera house.” And of course they’re not wrong. And you have these boxes that look like opera boxes on the side. And if you look at the high altar, you’ve got this, it’s, if you could set this high altar to music, my goodness, this would be a rumbustious piece of music. All this, you feel like all these saints gallivanting across the altar, dancing, it’s a wild kind of ecclesiastical disco that’s going on on top of the altarpiece. This is another Austrian monastery called Altenburg. And it’s by a nephew of Prandtauer called Munggenast. And you look at this, this is a bit later, and the colour scheme is more Rococo really than Baroque. With these paler, sweeter colours, and I don’t know whether you can see that the little sort of gambling putti on the staircase, and you think, “Ooh, this doesn’t look very, very monastic.” And how about this, this is a bed in the monastery of St. Florian. And you think, “Uh-hu, yes. What were monks doing in a bed like this?” Well, actually this bed was made for Prince Eugene of Savoy, who presumably must have stayed in the monastery. And well, I dread to think what he was doing in this bed. He was known to get up to all sorts of high jinks with young soldiers.

But you sort of think, “Well, it would be rather a dangerous bed to do anything too athletic in, you could really do yourself an injury on it.” But I also, I’d like to stress the serious cultural value of these monasteries. There’ll be three spectacular elements in any Austrian or South German monastery. There’ll be the church, of course, that has to be spectacular. There will be the Marmorsaal or the Kaisersaal, which I’ve already talked about. And there will be the library. The library is, there were great repositories of learning and scientific research. And on the left, this building is a very extraordinary building. It looks like a bit like a 1930’s skyscraper is actually an observatory built in the 1740’s at the monastery of Kremsmunster. Here we are in the library of Altenburg. My goodness, I think it might be quite hard to concentrate on your book sitting in a library like that. There’s so much going on. These rearing horses in the entablature. It a very lively building indeed. Now this is the monastery of Waldsassen, which is in Bavaria. We’ve crossed the border now. It’s very close to the border of the Czech Republic. And it looks in this photograph, it all looks a bit “Sound of Music.” It, this is an 18th century interior. But what is a kind of extraordinary about it? It is, you can see it’s carved in wood. That in it itself, in you’d say more economically and culturally inverted commerce, advanced parts of Europe. Wood, carved wood, would be less likely to be used by the middle 18th century.

And the other thing is, these carvings are actually based on 16th century German woodcut prints. So here again, I’m emphasising this point that however dynamic and amazing these, this style is, it’s a backward looking one. And oh, here’s a detail of a part of the decoration of the monastery of Waldsassen. Now I’ve spent, I spent over 30 summers of my life in this area. And I, there can be very few of these churches that I’ve not been to on multiple occasions, and I find them very fascinating. And one of the fascinating things that does fascinate me about them is that when these churches were Baroque-ized, very often sculptures or statues, which were revered. They’ll cult statues. I know for Protestants and for Jews this often seems like idolatry. But in the Catholic church, you know, sculptures take on this kind of cult quality. So often when the church was completely cleaned out and the decoration was changed, they would retain the old sculptures. And so we’ve got actually two 16th century sculptures here that have 18th century decorative surrounds. One on the left, well, they’re both very Rococo, but the one on the left, extremely Rococo. And, but they, there doesn’t seem to be a clash of styles. So my point here is that although, as I already said, the German Baroque derives from Roman Baroque, I think the reason that this style thrived so much in Germany was that it actually fed into many German traditions and many German character traits. Now, another point I want to make without I hope sounding racist against the Germans. I certainly wouldn’t want to be. I’m very at home in Germany. But they are, Germans go, they go to extremes.

What can you say in culturally, politically. If they’re going to be fascists, they’ll be the worst fascists. If they’re going to be communist, they’ll be the most communist. They’re the best Democrats in Europe at the moment. Whatever they do, they do it thoroughly and well, whether it’s a church interior or to put it brutally, genocide. They’re consequent. This is, you don’t have a, there’s not even an English equivalent for the word consequent, which means you follow through to the ultimate. And there’s German, you’ve got two pulpits here. My God, you’d have to give a good sermon from one of these pulpits, you’re going to be terribly upstaged by your own pulpit. So, but the, the one on the right is late Gothic. So that’s early 16th century. And the one on the left is Baroque Rococo. So it’s mid-18th century, of course they’re in different styles and they’re using a different recovery of ornament. But in fact, the effect is remarkably similar, wildly, wildly over the top. An another aspect I’d say of German art, making a huge, huge generalisation, that I’m going to actually quote from Otto Dix. He said, “All German art tends to portraiture.” And I think that if you look at a face painted by Durer, or if you look at face painted by Otto Dix for that matter in the 20th century, it, the face is explored.

The nooks and crannies of the face are explored. The, you have a map of the face, and there’s this very strong individualization and expressiveness. And here we’re looking actually at sculptures from very, very different periods. Late gothic, early 16th century, on the right hand side. And a sculpture of a cardinal by the Baroque sculptor, Munich sculptor Ignaz Gunther on the left-hand side. And this sort of expressiveness, exaggerated expressiveness. So late gothic, Erasmus Grasser on left-hand side and a sculpture called Straub from the mid 18th century. And horror vacui, I think you can say, it’s funny cause the Germans are very extreme about this. When you think that the, the Germany is the country of Bauhaus, which practically criminalises ornament, completely rejects ornament. But when they go for ornament, do they ever go for ornament? And there is this kind of complete horror vacui. Again you’ve got a different vocabulary ornament in, on the right hand side Late Gothic and on the left Late Baroque Rococo. So again, I’m emphasising that there is a continuity that even though the style may have been imported from Rome, it becomes very, very German. And another thing that always amuses me in these churches are these little fat putti that seem to have been fed on, you know, German sausages and beer. A little porky putti.

And you see swarms of them in Baroque churches. They’re all over the place, very playful. And again, we’ve got a 16th century one on the left hand side, an 18th century putti on the right hand side. Now Bavaria produces probably the most spectacular Baroque of all, but it comes late to Bavaria. And the reason for that, again, is a political one that Bavaria was on the losing side in the War of Spanish Succession. Bavaria allied itself with France. And we, of course, in Britain celebrate the Battle of Blenheim as a great British military victory. It it was actually in a little village in Bavaria called Blenheim. It was a catastrophe for Bavaria, and Bavaria- that’s 1704, and for a decade Bavaria was occupied very brutally, actually, by the Austrians. So everything was on hold. And then after the Treaty of Utrecht and the, Max Emanuel, the ruler of Bavaria comes back from his exile in France. It’s like, “Wow!” The incredible outburst of energy, both in secular architecture, all the palaces, wonderful palaces built by Max Manuel, like Nymphenburg and in monastic architecture. And two quite different. I’ll see how far I get today, whether I actually talk about any secular architecture at all. You’ll find the secular architecture is French influenced, and the ecclesiastical architecture is Roman influenced. This is- Trouble is almost every building I’m going to show you today, I’m going to say is one of my favourite buildings ‘cause I just- these are all also wonderful.

But is the monastery, Benedictine monastery of Weltenburg, and it’s on a bend in the river Danube. And I recommend, a wonderful thing to do is to first of all visit the city of Regensburg, which is one of the few ancient cities in Germany, more or less untouched by the Second World War. So that’s wonderful to go to. And take a boat and go down the river to Weltenburg. And I suggest before you go into the church, you have a very good hearty alcoholic lunch, either with wines or monastic beer, and get just a bit drunk to prepare yourself to go into this astonishing church. Here is a section and a plan of the church. And you can learn a lot in this case. First of all, look at the plan. You can see the whole church is actually made up of a series of ovoid shapes. I’ve already emphasised that the Baroque really loves the oval shape. And then when you look at the section, you can see that actually the church, the nave of the church has no windows. So it’s quite dark when you go into the church. The two important sources of light are from windows that are hidden from your view when you go into the church, one is a big window behind the high altar, and the other if you look up to the top, you can see a whole series again of oblong or ovoid windows. There’s a kind of inner dome there above the inner dome hidden from your view. So choose a nice, bright, sunny day, and as you walk into the church, you will, it will take a moment for your eyes to adjust.

The church is really quite dark, darker than it seems in this image. But you’ll, so, and it takes you a moment really to take in what you are looking at cause you’ve got this, you’ll have this very strong sunlight flooding from behind the high altar and down from the dome. From windows, as I said, that you cannot actually see. Here is the high altar with twisted Solomonic columns and an over life size Saint George rescuing a very hysterical princess on the right hand side, very dramatic, very operatic. And then you look up into the dome, and cause you’ve got these windows that are hidden from your view, the fresco seems to be illuminated with heavenly, supernatural light. And there’s this Baroque Illusionism. Of course, it was Bernini and his followers, who first experimented with this in Rome, where things seem to be falling out of the fresco. So you’ve got putti that are actually 3D and polychrome, they’re coloured, and these rather sexy looking clouds that look like fleshy bottoms that are flopping out of the fresco. It’s really amazing. It’s an amazing experience to go into this church. Now though if you do a tour of these churches, can I urge you, you must take binoculars or opera glasses. Cause there are so many wonderful details that you want to get close to. So you take out opera glasses and you say, “Ooh, I think there’s a man there. I think there’s a man looking down on me.”

And you are dead right. There is. This is Cosmas Damian Asam, who’s the architect of the church. I’ve just realised I’ve not even told you the architect. He belongs to a family of architects. There were a couple of generations, but the two important members are Cosmas Damian Asam, who was a fresco painter and an architect; and his brother Egid Quirin Asam, who was a sculptor and architect; and their sister who was a nun, was also in on the action. She helped with the polychroming of the sculptures. You look up at this, he’s laughing. He’s laughing at you cause he just, it’s a big joke, you know, and that’s, people say that Germans don’t have a sense of humour. Yes they do. They have a wonderful sense of humour, which is sometimes different from a British one, but they certainly have one. So that that was Weltenburg started 1716. Two years later, his brother Egid Quirin Asam created a nearby monastic church, You can see both in an afternoon, at the monastery of Rohr. And as he’s a sculptor, of course, the emphasis here is very much on sculpture and the high altar. Behind the high altar, you have this extraordinary operatic sculpture of the ascent of the virgin with, she’s jet propelled, zoomed out of her sarcophagus, which you see at the bottom here. And you see all the apostles flailing around ecstatically and hysterically as she zooms upward. And from this angle, it really does look like she’s floating upwards. You have to get round the side of the altar, and you can actually see that she is rather precariously held up in mid-air by iron bars.

Here’s a close up of the virgin zooming ecstatically up towards heaven. Now the final and in a way, the most amazing masterpiece of the Asams is the so-called Asamkirche in Munich. I regularly take groups to Munich, and I have a little ritual about this. I mean it’s always the final thing of an architectural tour. And I walk the people from the Marienplatz centre and down the Sendlinger Straße towards the church. And I don’t really say very much about it because I don’t want to, I want 'em to be amazed. I want 'em to be totally gobsmacked. That’s what you must be with this. So I don’t want in any way to give the game away before we get there. So this whole ensemble of church and two buildings is actually the design of Egid Quirin Asam, but made with the help of his brother. And it’s his house on the left with all that frothy Rococo decoration on it; the church, which was his private church, he paid for this; and on the right hand side, the simpler house is the house of the priest. Now amazingly, this building escaped very serious damage in the Second World War. It’s still a fantastic building. He had, of course, it’s in an old part of Munich, mediaeval part of Munich with narrow streets. And he had the problem with the church that it’s a small site and it’s an extremely narrow site.

And cause the church is hemmed in by buildings on either side, there’s no possibility of letting light in from the sides. So he turns this disadvantage to advantage, and he makes something dramatic out of it. You can see you’ve got this huge window on the front of the church and taking a cue, I think from Borromini. Yes, you can see the Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane who also had the same problem of a very narrow, awkward site. He undulates the facade. I mean, it always looks to me like in both these churches, but even more in the Asamkirche, that it is somehow organic and that it’s malleable. It’s sort of soft. And it looks to me like the two houses on either side are pressing hard against the church, and the front is just buckled under the pressure. And then inside, oh my God, this church is so amazing. I’ve been into it on two trips with Judi. I remember the first one, it was quite an experience. It was sundown. It was the end of the day. We’d done a walk through the town. Judi and I debated long and intensely about whether it would be good idea to take a Jewish group to Munich with its political history. And this was an extraordinary moment. This, we’re talking 20 years ago, I suppose, and a lot of the people we took were people whose childhood had been spent in Germany. And some of them, they were going back to Germany for the first time. And you, they literally, you could see them literally sniffing, smelling the coffee, smelling the, you know, of course Germany has the best bakeries in the world, most unbelievable, you know, cakes and breads and so on. You could see them sort of sniffing and thinking, “Ooh, this is all very familiar.”

And then we got to this church, as I said, it was sundown and as we walk in they were celebrating high mass and you had all these nice young priests in their frocks, you know, waving smells and bells and so on. Oh my god, what a moment. You had a group of what? 12-20 elderly North London Jews. Their jaws almost hit the pavement. But I’m glad to say that after a moment of shock, they really did get into it and enjoyed it. On another occasion in that church with Judi, she got a fit of the giggles. We nearly got thrown out. It is so over the top. It is so outrageous. This church, where can I even begin to carry on about it? Look at the entablature, it’s just having a riot. And all, you know, the sexy angels dangling their legs over the entablature. And confession box. Well, you better have some good sins to confess in a confession box like this. And in the entrance way, this fusion of, of painting, sculpture, and the Baroque Illusionism with a statue holding up an oil painting. On the right hand side is Bernini. Cause he’s the source of this kind of fusion and of different media. Even the skeletons seem to be having a good time in this church. Everybody is dancing, it’s an all dancing, all singing riot of a church. And you can see somebody being brought back from the dead. Yeah. Now, so everything we’ve talked about till now, really I would categorise as late Baroque. The Asams are, although they can be very frothy, it’s still Baroque, it still has a monumental quality to it, and there’s that Baroque interest in the play of light and dark. So I’m now moving on to the Rococo style.

And my students always used to say, how can you tell what’s the difference between Baroque and Rococo? I will try and explain to you. This is perhaps the first Rococo church. And this is by another family of architect designers called the Zimmermanns. This is their first masterpiece, and it’s in a little village called Steinhausen. And believe me, you cannot get more rural than this village. You can see even today, it’s a tiny, tiny village. The last time I went, the barn, which you can see to the left, was full of manure. The stench of manure was all pervasive in that village. You could not get away from it. And there were just swarms of flies. So it was considerably more rural than I feel comfortable with. But then it’s worth it when you get inside the church. Oh my God, you think, what must the peasants these- I mean today, again, at the risk of sounding, making a terrible generalisation, and sounding racist, Bavarians are… How can I put this politely? In German you can say bauer, bäuerlich. That, which is not a rude thing to say. On the other hand, if I’d said there were peasants in English, that would sound very, very rude. But there’s very, very, a lot of Bavarians outside Munich are pretty rural. And you think, “My God, what must they have thought, these peasants in the 18th century, when they walked?” They must have thought they died and gone to heaven when they walked into this church. And so the difference between Baroque and Rococo, this church is full of light.

You’ve got big windows letting in a lot of light; you have lots of areas of white surface that increases the lightness; and you have these pastel Rococo colours, these sweet pale colours; and of course, if you look up at the top, you’ve got the rocaille shapes, these curling sea scrolls, which are typical of the Rococo style. Now this is definitely a church where you need your opera glasses. Oh my God, look at that. You want to lie on the floor and look up at the ceiling. And as you look up, I don’t know whether you can see just above where it says “Stop share,” you can see a curve and you can see something in that curve. And you think, “Is it a bird?” There it is again. Is that a bird? Yes, it’s a bird. And around the church there’s a wonderful sense of a sophisticated, theatrical, amazing building. But something, as I said, that’s very rural, very countrified, and nature has entered the building. As you look around the building, you can see feeding birds and nesting birds and so on. Now, the ultimate crazy Bavarian Rococo church is the Wieskirche. That means the meadow church. It’s in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a meadow. And it was built in the mid 18th century to celebrate a miracle that became the centre of pilgrimage. The local monastery were Baroqueizing, and they were clearing out the old gothic sculptures. And they put, there was a sculpture of Jesus’ man of sorrows. And they didn’t want it anymore cause it was old fashioned and gothic. And they put it in a barn.

And then somebody noticed it was crying, tears were pouring down. It was probably damned, I suppose. But anyway, people thought, “Oh, it’s a miracle.” And they all, wonderful miracles started happening, and people started getting cured, and winning the lottery, and all those things that happen in these pilgrimage places. And that’s why this church was built. And here is the rather ugly gothic statue surrounded by all this fabulous Rococo fru-fru. And wow, what a church in the middle of nowhere. And you think Bavaria was a really backward place at this time. It was not one of the richer parts of Germany. It was a poor rural area to get this sense of incredible richness, spectacular richness. In fact, one of the reasons that they’re able to do this is that this church is built from cheap materials. It’s mostly timber and plaster. The, I think the big columns outside of- either side of the high altar are scagliola. But you’ll find that most of the marble in these Rococo churches is not even scagliola. It’s completely fake marble, faux marble. And so, also because the church is made is, hasn’t got much stone in it. So it’s not, you don’t have very heavy vaults. They’re wooden vaults. So you can really open things up and have an incredible sense of movement and rhythm in the church. And my, the last church, I think at the last thing I’m going to talk about cause I don’t think I will go on to talk about secular architecture. Now we’re in the, it is in still today it’s in Bavaria. It’s actually Franconia, which is in the northern part of the state of Bavaria today. But it traditionally, it’s something quite different.

It wasn’t part of Bavaria. And Franconia was much richer, had important cities like Nuremberg and Bamberg, and I would say culturally more sophisticated. And this is another pilgrimage church on a site where a shepherd had a vision of 14 saints. 14 saints in German is Vierzehnheiligen. And that’s what this church is called. And it’s on a hill. Very spectacular. The architect for this is Balthasar Neumann. And you can see from the outside, the building has a very strong vertical emphasis. So from miles and miles and miles away, you can see this church on top of its hill. And so pilgrims, there’s a, you have to walk up to the top. Well, these days, of course you can go by coach, but you’re supposed to walk up as a pilgrims way. If you are really pious, you can go up on your knees. And this is another ch- actually this is made of stone and it has lots of real marble as well as scagliola. In this case, Neumann, who was trained as an engineer, not as a sculptor. And he’s a brilliant from a technical engineering point of view. And he designed the space of the church. And that’s a, I can’t really convey this to you with the images on a screen. The only way you can really experience this is to go there and to walk into this church. And if ever a church seemed to be dancing around you, this is it. This contraption in the middle of this church has statues of the 14 saints of the vision. You can see here, including this saint here who’s lost his head, but he’s not going to let that spoil the party for him.

And there is a sense of celebration of the most, the biggest party ever going on in this church. So in this particular case, whereas with the Asams and the Zimmermanns they did everything. They didn’t just design the building, but the entire decor, and all the frescoes, and all the sculptures were in the family, so to speak. Whereas with Vierzehnheiligen, it’s Neumann, who is the architect, and a whole team of sculptors, stuccoers, and painters who are responsible for the Rococo decoration. And so I’m going to finish by emphasising this point of the humour, the lightness, the playfulness of these buildings, these swarms of little putti all over the place. Always imagine you could go into these churches with a huge fly spray and go psh-psh and they’d be dropping out of the rafters. This is one of my favourite churches. It’s in now, it’s in Bogenhausen, which is now a kind of, it’s like Hampstead of Munich. It’s a wealthy suburb. When this church was built, Bogenhausen was a village, some distance from Munich. And you know, a very poor village. Very, very rural. So again, it’s, this is typical of a Bavarian church. You can find churches like this all over the state of Bavaria. This one I’m fond of because I used to live walking distance from it. So I used to go into it very, very often.

You can see it’s a small church, but it’s like a little opera house, a little theatre. And so some extreme examples of things that have happened to classical forms that that is sort of an entablature, it looks like it’s made out of toffee on the left hand side. And the urn, urn is a classical form. But what on earth has happened to this urn. It’s been hit by some terrible fungoid growth or disease. So got so much energy, so much movement. You can see a saint who’s a bishop, whose, he’s having a little moment of rest. He’s exhausted. So he’s sitting down next to his pulpit, and he’s taken his mitre off. And on the left, you have a very naughty cherub that has actually stolen the hat of a cardinal. And finally an image, two rather gruesome images. On the left, I mean, you find lots of these churches, Catholics love relics. So somebody, if somebody is very holy or revered, you know, their bones are put to good use and used decoratively in the church. And on the right you have wicked people who are burning in hell. But even that looks really quite fun in this late Baroque sculpture. So that’s it for today. I’m going to come out, and I can see there are lots of questions. So I’ll go into the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Always astonished how these buildings survived all the wars- Well, the answer is that lots of them didn’t. The most of the buildings I’ve shown you, apart from the Asamkirche and the Karlskirche, are not in cities. Of course, it was the cities that were destroyed. Munich is a city, of course, I knew extremely well. I’ve been going there for half my life.

No, no, most of my life actually. And there were built, there were big churches in Munich in the 1970s that were completely empty. They were just shells because they’d been totally destroyed in the Second World War. And they have actually been reconstructed and with incredible skill since. Is the Melk monastery-

• Patrick, Patrick, may I just interrupt? I just want to say to all our participants, number one, we are putting up these, the transcripts for people who can’t hear. So we don’t, I don’t, and Judi do- we do not want to see any complaining about them. Please, in the chats. And if you- there is a way to turn them off. You can find out how to do that and you can turn off, if it is bothering you. That’s number one. And number two, I also want to say that it’s very difficult when Judi is receiving truly obnoxious emails from our participants. And it’s difficult for me because I don’t want to have to manage that. You know, this is just a, it’s something that’s to be enjoyed by everybody. And this need to be, it needs to be accepted in the spirit in which it’s given in kindness and generosity and sharing. And I, it’s not fair to be unkind to Judi who works very, very hard. So I’m sorry to interrupt you. I just want to say to all of you, and those of you. You know what, if there’s that problem, don’t click on. That’s all. So you’re very welcome to join us, but if you do, please in the spirit of sharing and kindness and appreciation for Judi. So sorry, Patrick, to interrupt.

• Yeah, I want to continue by first of all saying, can I express my enormous, enormous appreciation of both Wendy and Judi’s so fantastic. She puts up with so much and she’s so supportive-

• She really does.

• So she’s got all my, my very warm thanks. Now, interesting, is the Melk monastery- No, it can’t be because Melk is on the Danube, not on the Rhine.

So I think, although I’m sorry to say, I don’t think I know Heisenberg.

Oh, the Lorelei, of course I know that. No, that’s on the Rhine.

Right… The library at Melk was the setting for Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose.” Yes, thank you.

Money for church refashioning in 19th century Britain came from the conquest of India, India and the other colonies. That’s a little bit, I mean, yes, yes. Well, you could say all wealth of England came from slavery and all sorts of bad things. Yes.

Q: Where did the money come from?

A: I think it was the poor exploited peasants. It always astonishes me. When you go into a village like Steinhausen, which was so poor. How they, you know, that they were willing to put so much money. I suppose again, it’s exploitation, but I think it’s more, it’s not colonies in this case, it’s more local exploitation.

The putti and heads and portraits, they can be either. They can be polychromed wood or they can be gypsum as well.

Q: What was the attitude?

A: That’s very interesting. I wish I had time to really talk more about that. The Saint Florian, which the only thing I showed you from that was of course that outrageous bed of Prince Eugene of Savoy. That was a very, of course, the Catholic Church’s record in the Second World War is basically not a good one. Well, we, to put it mildly, but there are great exceptions. And in fact, the Abbott of Saint Florian refused to fly the Nazi flag and refused to cooperate in any way with the Nazis. And as a result, they actually, they arrested him, put him in prison and closed down that monastery. So that was a lucky one to survive.

Q: Clear street windows in that Baroque church. When did these windows first appear?

A: I’m not sure I fully understand the question.

But, right… This, I could do a lecture, I mean, we’ll see. I mean, I’d like to do a lecture of course on Nymphenburg and all those wonderful palaces they’re terrific.

Q: Is the Dresden Baroque more similar to Rococo than Baroque?

A: Well, the, because that that big church that they found, Keisha, that’s pretty Rococo, isn’t it? That they’ve just redone. But otherwise, and of course the Zwinger, it’s late Baroque but it’s really sort of tending towards Rococo. Next trip to- We’ll have to get Lionel to organise a trip for us. I would love to do that. Yes, I know it is. Somebody seen a similar church in Tourol. I mean they’re all over central, North Italy, Central Europe, Czech, Bohemia you can find, even Poland. You can find these churches. Scagliola, faux marble, scagliola is a particular technique. If you’re saying faux marble, it could be any technique. It is just marble that’s not real marble.

Q: How were the costs?

A: Yeah, interesting question. That’s something you need to do more- I’d like to know more about that.

• [Judi] Patrick. Could you read out the full question please?

Q - Right, sorry, yes. What’s the difference between scagliola and faux marble?

A: Scagliola is a technique. Faux marble is just fake marble.

Q: Who, how were the costs of these buildings met?

A: I think it was the local people. I don’t think. It’s taxes and local people who paid for it.

Q: Why was it necessary to build such elaborate churches in rural areas?

A: I don’t think it was for trade purposes. No, I think it was, I suppose it, I think you could say that the Catholic church was, that they, you could, if you want to be cynical, you could say that they were instruments of oppression. It’s to keep people impressed, to keep them down. But I’d rather, they’re so wonderful, and they enrich us all. I don’t want to be too negative about them.

Vierzehnheiligen somebody says it’s their favourite. It is completely amazing.

Q: Are these amazing Bavarian churches built between houses based on East West basis?

A: I’m just trying to think about the Asamkirche. It is, I think, but I mean he didn’t have a choice. He had to there, cause that’s how it is with that street.

How long? I this- In some cases I can tell you, I mean, it depends how consistent work was on them. The Melk took, was started in 1702 and finished in the 1730’s. It’s different in every case, I think.

Q: What is the purpose of the central stone arrangement in the aisle of?

A: I don’t think it’s stone actually. That thing in the middle of the Vierzehnheiligen. It is, you’re quite right in the sense that it’s like a giant reliquary. But I think, it’s just to, it’s to display the statues of the 14 Saints, who appeared to the shepherd.

Q: Could secular Rococo?

A: I’ll have to think if I can squeeze a lecture in.

Q: Did this type of architecture intend to inspire awe and envy?

A: Yeah, envy. I don’t know, I don’t think envy’s the right word. I or yes, but I think that, I think you are, they, I think they’re intended to inspire joy as well. They’re very, very joyous buildings.

Roden- Somebody says, “We visited Rothenburg and the Wieskirche. Rothenburg is another fabulous church.” There is so many of these wonderful churches around there. Füssen, yeah. Another big monastery they said they’ve been to. Würzburg is at the Archbishop’s Palace. That’s one of the highlights of European architecture. It’s a very, very rich area.

Yeah, we have, let’s, we’ll get Lionel to make an, to book a nice sunny day when we go to Weltenburg. Right. Good.

Q: How were all these wonderful churches paid for?

A: I mean, I don’t think I can give you any more information than I’ve given on that. I think it was the poor suffering peasants who had to pay for them.

Right. Good. It’s, I think it’s nice. Thank you very much. I want to say I may not read out all these blush-making comments, but I really do appreciate them. It gives me great joy to give these lectures. And of course I love it that you enjoy them as well.

Yeah, all the churches I’ve described today, they’re all Catholic. But actually, funny enough, I mean, there are Lutheran churches that are not dissimilar. This one evening in, in Augsburg, which was a mainly a Catholic city, but there’s a Lutheran, there’s a very Rococo Lutheran church. And of course the Frauenkirche, in Dresden is a Protestant church. It’s not a Catholic church. Right. Good. Right. Thank you.

I think I’m just, this is nice. I’m just reading through lots of very nice appreciative comments for all of us, Wendy and Judi as well. And I think I’m probably getting to the end of actual questions.

• Okay, thanks, Patrick. Sorry that I, I sorry that I had to jump in there, but I like to, I’d like to, I’m very protective of Judi and Kylie and Shana and all, actually everybody, all my presenters. We all doing our best. So I wanted say thanks a million for another brilliant presentation as usual.

• Thank you very much, Wendy.

• Thank you. So we have another, we have another presentation at two o'clock, which is probably, which is in one hour. It’s two o'clock New York time. And it’s going to be a Republican and a Democrat talking about their book and their friendships called “Union” and about building bridges today in America. So Patrick to you, thank you very much. We will see you on Wednesday.

• Yep.

• Very good, take care. Lots of love.

• [Patrick] Yeah.

• Bye now everybody, buh-bye.