Jan Blažej Santini Aichel, also spelled Aichl (Italian: Giovanni Battista Santini Aichel, German: Johann Blasius Santini Aichel; 3 February 1677 – 7 December 1723) was a Czecharchitect of Italian descent, whose major works are representative of the unique Baroque Gothic style.[1]
Biography
He was born on the day of Saint Blaise as the oldest son to a respectable family of Prague stonemasons (his grandfather Antonio Aichel moved from Cadempino to Prague in the 1630s) and was baptized in the St. Vitus Cathedral as Johann Blasius Aichel. He was born with extensive physical disabilities, preventing him from following in his father's footsteps.[2] He studied painting under the Bohemian Court painter Christian Schröder.
Around 1696 he started to travel and gain experience. After his journey through Austria he arrived in Rome, where he had the possibility to meet with the work of Francesco Borromini.[3] Borromini's influence is apparent in his predilection for star-shaped forms and complex symbolism. It was in Italy where Santini Aichel incorporated into his name his father's name, Santini.
Santini Aichel founded his architectural practice in Prague in 1703, attaining the status of a Burgher of Prague in 1705. He bought and rebuilt the Valkounsky House in the same year. Santini married Schröder's daughter, Veronica Elisabeth, in 1707. They had four children, but all three sons died from tuberculosis at an early age; the only child left was Anna Veronika (born 1713). Santini's wife died seven years later and he remarried a South Bohemian noblewoman, Antonia Ignatia Chrapická of Mohliškovice, whereby Santini was ennobled. Daughter Jana Ludmila and son Jan Ignác Rochus were born from this marriage.
Santini Aichel died at 46, having built over 100 buildings in his twenty-year career, but leaving some unfinished. Although he had become a well-regarded architect to Bohemia's greatest noble families and monastic orders, his original, eclectic style had few successors or imitators.[4]
Horyna, Mojmír. J. B. Santini-Aichel – Život a dílo. Karolinum, Prague 1998, ISBN80-7184-664-3.
Kalina, Pavel. In opere gotico unicus: The Hybrid Architecture of Jan Blazej Santini-Aichel and Patterns of Memory in Post-Reformation Bohemia.Praha: UMENI-ART 58.1 (2010): 42-+.
Young, Michael. Santini-Aichel'S Design for the Baroque Convent at the Cistercian. New York: Columbia, 1994.
