Architecture

Jan Blažej Santini Aichel signed as a "painter and architect" in the official certificate of acquirement of the burgess-ship of Malá Strana from the 20^th October of 1705. He got trained in both these professions with Jean Baptist Mathey until the year 1695. While his architectonic work is represented by approximately tens of buildings, we do not know any Santini's painting work and it seems that he was not concerned with painting during his architectonic activity anymore. The only evidence of the outstanding painting and drawing skills of Santini is the extraordinary artistic level of his designs. The designs are also a clue to make sense of his way of architectonic idea and the individual principles of his buildings.

The well-known ground plan of the peak Santini's work - the Church of St John of Nepomuk on Zelena hora in Zdar nad Sazavou - was exactly and fairly designed by means of a compass on a sheet of paper. The logical steps of the ground plan arrangement, utilization of construction in the rate of the golden section and complete multiples of semi-diameters of the individual used circles, the lot had got both the formal and the contents qualities from the beginning. Thus, the rising geometrical pattern is a genuinely ideogram of drawing, more a theoretical and intelligible reality than a kind of design and structure. Including the sections of the building and the architectural design of its interior were elaborated by means of equal, abstract processes in the vertical plane. In this phase of the project, the scheme of the building arose as abstract minimized networks delimitating the internal area and opening it to the spatial infinity in a number of directions. However, the network of vertical sections also shows an explicit design of the dematerialised but secure construction system in spirit of the cathedral support structures. This system shows sufficient proportioning of the wall thickness including in the ground sections. As if the abstract linear network predetermined not only the appearance but also the proportioning of the building material and its structural ties. Further shape structuring of the exterior and the interior of the church - completed by the newest findings of the original appearance of the middle area vault architectural structure - called up and intensified the impression of the building as a dematerialised labyrinth of lines penetrated by the light, of a superior sacred complexion.

Analyses of other buildings and designs of Jan Blase Santini Aichel also illustrate that this - symbolic-ideal pattern - was generally true for the Santini's sacral buildings and it was intended and prepared by the architect and most probably by the customers, too. In this sense, the Santini's architecture was actually a peculiar aesthetical enunciation about the deepest qualities and potential of the architectural reality predicating of the apparent character of the world. And just in these aspects, the Santini's architecture goes beyond the common aesthetic standards of that time and becomes the artistic reality - the baroque reality though, but also a super-stylistic one.