Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt

Austrian architect

• Born: November 14, 1668
• Birthplace: Genoa (now in Italy)
• Died: November 16, 1745
• Place of death: Vienna, Austria

One of the supreme architects of the Austrian Baroque movement, Hildebrandt specialized in the design and construction of palaces and pleasure gardens for the Austrian and German nobility. His finest achievement was the Belvedere Palace, built for Eugene of Savoy in Vienna.

Early Life

A Genoa-born Austrian of mixed parentage, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt (yoh-HAHN LEW-kahs fahn HIHL-duh-brahnt) was born in 1668. When his family returned to Austria, Hildebrandt found that, with few exceptions, both the secular and the ecclesiastical patrons of the arts within the Habsburg Dynasty employed only Italian architects, decorators, and painters. As a result of this situation, he became one of several Austrian artists who developed a distinctly Austrian version of the Baroque style to compete with the dominant Italian style. This Austrian Baroque has come to be known as the Kaiserstil, or imperial style, because it was associated with the Habsburg Dynasty and with the rebuilding of Vienna as an imperial capital in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Hildebrandt’s father was a German captain who served first in the Genoese and then in the imperial army. His mother is presumed to have been Italian. In Italy, the young Hildebrandt studied architecture, city planning, and engineering, and for a time was a student of Carlo Fontana. Besides being much influenced by Fontana, Hildebrandt was also greatly impressed by Guarino Guarini, who was associated with Turin, a city where Hildebrandt may have spent some of his early years. By the 1690’s, Hildebrandt was earning his living as a military engineer with the imperial army, and it was in this capacity that he attracted the attention of Prince Eugene of Savoy, with whom he campaigned in northern Italy in 1695-1696.

It was probably with Eugene’s encouragement that Hildebrandt left the army to pursue the career of a professional architect. He reached Vienna in 1697, and within a year, presumably on Eugene’s recommendation, he was appointed an imperial councillor and, in 1700, a court architect. By that date, however, the imperial family had already bestowed their architectural favors upon Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, and following the latter’s death in 1723 they transferred their loyalty as patrons to his son, Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach. In part because of the intense rivalry between Hildebrandt and the Fischer von Erlachs, the former received few commissions from the Habsburgs. He did, however, receive a lifelong salary from the court, and he was ennobled in 1720.

Soon after his arrival in Vienna in 1697, Hildebrandt received his first commission, to build a garden palace outside the city for Count Heinrich Franz Mansfeld-Fondi. Drawing upon his extensive knowledge of both Italian and French architecture and landscaping, he developed a striking design for a residence at the lower end of a slope, a triangular piece of property off the Rennweg that would rise from the residence in a series of terraces.

Hildebrandt continued to work on this first project while other commissions were raining upon him thick and fast, but he failed to complete it before the count died in 1715. The next owner of the still unfinished residence turned it over to Fischer von Erlach for completion. Thus, it is from the original plans rather than from the present structure that Hildebrandt’s intentions can best be gauged. No doubt, he must have resented having to hand this project over to his rival, but by this time he was fully occupied elsewhere, particularly on behalf of Prince Eugene, who had become the emperor’s greatest subject in his various roles as commander in chief, governor in absentia of the Spanish Netherlands, and a prince of the ruling house of Savoy.

It seems that Eugene’s first commission for his young protégé was to enlarge his town house and official residence, built for him by Fischer von Erlach on the Himmelpfortgasse. There is no evidence of a quarrel between Eugene and Fischer von Erlach, but from 1701 onward it was to Hildebrandt that the prince turned with all his major architectural commissions. Meanwhile, the prince had purchased the island of Czepel, on the Danube River below Budapest, and had instructed Hildebrandt to design a summer retreat there at the village of Ráckeve. The architect drew up plans for a single-story, three-sided structure with a cupola and proceeded with its construction, but despite the idyllic rustic setting, Eugene lost interest in the project, perhaps as a result of the Hungarian uprising under Ferenc Rákóczi II between 1703 and 1711: He is recorded as having visited it only once, in 1717. By then, however, Hildebrandt had already embarked upon the building of what would eventually be his masterpiece.

Life’s Work

The Habsburg nobles of the early eighteenth century each had several homes. They had town palaces, cramped within the confines of the old city of Vienna, and country palaces, located on the nobles’ estates throughout the empire. In addition to these, it had become fashionable to build garden palaces in the suburbs of Vienna. Such had been the Mansfeld-Fondi Palace, Hildebrandt’s first commission.

Since 1693, Prince Eugene had been buying plots of land off the Rennweg, plots that were now consolidated into an extended triangle of land on which he planned to build a sumptuous residence. The prince commissioned Hildebrandt to help him build this residence, but, to perhaps an even greater extent than with most patrons of this period, Eugene himself had definite ideas about what he wanted. The first part of the complex to be completed (between 1714 and 1716) was the elegant Lower Belvedere, intended to house the prince’s paintings (Eugene was one of the greatest art collectors and connoisseurs of the age). Its rooms opened directly onto the garden, which swept upward to where, between 1721 and 1725, the much more elaborate Upper Belvedere was erected. Both prince and architect conceived of the landscaping in the grandest terms, and a French pupil of the great André Le Nôtre, Dominique Girard, was brought from Munich to assist in the work.

The Upper Belvedere provided the setting for Prince Eugene’s almost regal entertainments. “The Belvedere,” the art critic Anthony Blunt has written, “is Hildebrandt’s supreme achievement and shows him at the height of his powers, finally in possession of an idiom wholly his own.” Not that Hildebrandt’s work for the prince ended there. In 1725, just when the Upper Belvedere was nearing completion, Eugene purchased a dilapidated property known as Schlosshof on the March River to serve as a country palace where he could entertain guests with hunting and fětes champětres. Between 1725 and 1732, Hildebrandt added two new wings to the old seventeenth century palace and laid out gardens of exquisite beauty and originality. Unfortunately, little remains of the palace, apart from the plans, to indicate what Schlosshof was originally like.

Throughout the years when Hildebrandt was occupied with these major undertakings for Eugene, there was no lack of commissions from other members of the Viennese nobility, although frequently he handed over projects for completion to his deputy, the master mason Franz Jänggle. Eugene never attempted to monopolize Hildebrandt’s time or talent, and in addition to his friendship with the prince, the architect established a close connection with the powerful ecclesiastical dynasty of the Schönborns. In 1705, Friedrich Carl von Schönborn was appointed vice-chancellor of the empire, a post he held until 1734, by which time he was also prince-bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg.

The vice-chancellor had a passion for building that amounted to an obsession. He greatly admired Hildebrandt, enjoyed his company, and consulted him on matters of architecture, decoration, and furnishings for the best part of four decades, an extraordinary example of an enduring friendship between patron and artist. In 1705, Hildebrandt began building a magnificent garden palace for the vice-chancellor in the suburbs, and although neither palace nor garden survives in its original form, the plans suggest that this may have been one of the most original exercises in landscaping of the period. Then, in 1710, Schönborn purchased an estate at Göllersdorf in the country to the north of Vienna, and from 1712, Hildebrandt worked intermittently on restoring the former palace, enlarging it, and laying out the gardens.

Meanwhile, during the period when Schönborn was acquiring Göllersdorf, his uncle, Lothar Franz von Schönborn, imperial chancellor, elector-archbishop of Mainz, and prince-bishop of Bamberg, decided to build for himself a palace at Pommersfelden, in the country a few miles outside Bamberg. For the overall design, Lothar sought the services of Johann Dientzenhofer, whose work included the cathedral at Fulda, the Benedictine Abbey at Banz, and the design for the Neumünster at Würzburg. In addition, perhaps at the urging of his nephew, he engaged Hildebrandt, as well as the court architect from Mainz, Maximilian von Welsch, who had been involved with Hildebrandt at Göllersdorf and who would work with him again at the Würzburg Residenz. Johann Michael Rottmayr was summoned to paint the ceiling of the spectacular Marmorsaal. In the end, Hildebrandt’s contribution to Pommersfelden was relatively small, but it was of outstanding quality: He was responsible for the central staircase, built between 1713 and 1715. In an age when the Treppenhaus (an entrance hall with a double staircase) often provided the focus for an entire palace, Hildebrandt’s creation at Pommersfelden was without equal, including his own later staircases at Schloss Mirabell and Göttweig.

In 1719, Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn, brother of Friedrich Carl, became prince-bishop of Würzburg and immediately began to plan a city residence for himself as an alternative to the former episcopal castle across the river. Characteristic of the Schönborns as patrons, he involved more than one architect in the project. Baltasar Neumann, who, like Hildebrandt, had been trained originally as a military engineer, was to have overall responsibility, but Hildebrandt, von Welsch, and Dientzenhofer were all involved at one time or another, along with several others. There seems to have been considerable friction between Hildebrandt and Neumann; in the end, Neumann’s ideas prevailed, and it is uncertain how much of the Residenz is Hildebrandt’s work, although certainly the Hofkapelle contains features by both men. When, in 1743, engravings of the Residenz were published, attributing the achievement to Neumann, Hildebrandt wrote bitterly to Friedrich Carl von Schönborn, “It grieves me very much, that another should parade himself in my clothes.”

Although primarily associated with secular commissions, Hildebrandt also designed several ecclesiastical buildings, of which the most important were the Dominican Church of St. Laurence in Gabel (modern Czechoslovakia), built between 1699 and 1711; St. Peter’s Church off the Graben in Vienna; and the Piarist Church of Maria-Treu in Vienna. He competed unsuccessfully against Fischer von Erlach, both to design the Karlskirche and to oversee the rebuilding of the Hofburg, but in 1718 a fire damaged much of the Benedictine Abbey of Göttweig, and its abbot, Gottfried Bessel, a former protégé of Lothar Franz von Schönborn, called upon Hildebrandt for its rebuilding.

Encouraged and assisted by Friedrich Carl von Schönborn, the architect immediately began drawing up plans for the abbey, and although today they exist only on paper, potentially they constituted Hildebrandt’s most ambitious undertaking. The immense project proved to be beyond the abbot’s means, however, and between 1724 and 1739 only the north and east wings and a Treppenhaus were completed. This stairway, however, ascending to a frescoed vault by Paul Troger, is one of Hildebrandt’s finest conceptions and a token of one of the great “might-have-beens” of architectural history.

Significance

It was Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt’s achievement to be able to draw together Italian, French, and native Austrian elements into an architectural synthesis that was both dynamic and fluid. As a designer, he demonstrated a tireless virtuosity; as a decorator, he evinced inventiveness on the grandest scale combined with close attention to detail. These qualities are perhaps most conspicuously displayed in his celebrated stairways at the Upper Belvedere, Schloss Mirabell, Pommersfelden, and Göttweig. The Belvedere is almost the only surviving monument to Hildbrandt’s extraordinary gifts for combining architecture and landscaping as a single art form. Many of his projects were left unfinished, were modified by others, or have been allowed to fall into decay. His magnificent plans and drawings, preserved in the Hofbibliothek, most of them never undertaken or abandoned before completion, are reminders of the constraints imposed upon even the most successful artists by changing circumstances or the whims of a patron.

Hildebrandt, though, was exceptionally fortunate in his patrons. Prince Eugene and the Schönborns were enlightened and discriminating men, well able to appreciate the ideas and suggestions of an employee whom they respected as an artist and, in some sense, treated as a friend. It must have helped that Hildebrandt seems to have possessed an equitable temperament and obliging, courtly manners, notwithstanding the odd flash of temper and an enthusiasm for the grandiose that led extravagant spenders into even greater extravagance. His relations with his patrons were surely very different from the dealings of the scholarly, withdrawn Fischer von Erlach with his dour Habsburg masters.

Inevitably, the two rivals invite comparison: Fischer von Erlach, Roman and academic; Hildebrandt, the creator of an architecture of fantasy and enchantment. Yet, as Victor L. Tapié has expressed it, “Fischer von Erlach and Hildebrandt are complementary, and one is inevitably reminded of Bernini and Borromini, for here again are two artists with incompatible genius both working at the same time to beautify and transform a capital city.”

Bibliography

Blunt, Anthony, et al. Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. This is a sumptuously produced volume, with beautiful illustrations, which while doing full justice to the Austrian Baroque, places it clearly in a broader European perspective. Strongly recommended.

Grimschitz, Bruno. Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. Vienna: Herold, 1959. This remains the definitive monograph on the architect, though it is available only in German.

Hempel, Eberhard. Baroque Art and Architecture in Central Europe. Translated by Elisabeth Hempel and Marguerite Kay. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965. A volume in the Pelican History of Art series, this is the standard work in English on Austrian and German Baroque.

Henderson, Nicholas. Prince Eugene of Savoy. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964. An excellent general biography of the prince, emphasizing his role as a patron as well as a military commander. Hildebrandt’s commissions are discussed.

McKay, Derek. Prince Eugene of Savoy. London: Thames & Hudson, 1977. This biography places emphasis upon the prince as a statesman. Chapter 20, however, deals with him as a patron and discusses Hildebrandt.

Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Late Baroque and Rococo Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1974. An outstanding survey of the subject, this book gives due weight to Hildebrandt’s originality and his contribution. Excellent illustrations with photographs and ground plans.

Powell, Nicolas. From Baroque to Rococo: An Introduction to Austrian and German Architecture from 1580 to 1790. London: Faber & Faber, 1959. A literate and perceptive general introduction to the subject. Good for beginners.

Sitwell, Sacheverell, ed. Great Houses of Europe. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1961. This anthology on European palaces includes essays by Monk Gibbon on Pommersfelden and the Würzburg Residenz, both superbly illustrated.

Tapié, Victor L. The Age of Grandeur: Baroque and Classicism in Europe. Translated by A. Ross Williamson. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960. Virtually an instant classic upon publication, this book provides the best general background to the art and aesthetics of Baroque Europe.