Sources of the Art

Jan Blazej Santini Aichel was baptized on the 4^th February of 1677 as a son of the mason master Santin Aichel and his wife Elisabeth born Thim in the St Vitus Cathedral in Prague. His parents lived in a house on the Northern foreground of the Prague's Castle that time, so within the St Vitus parish office. The father Santin Aichel (1652-1702) was the son of the mason Antonio Akel coming from the townlet Roveredo in Lugano who settled in Prague. Stone-cutting art of Santini Aichel was famous already in the time of his life and we can often come across it in the most sophisticated buildings in Prague. Probably not only the professional relationship but also the personal friendship connected him with the architect of the Prague's Bishop Jan Bedrich from Valdstejn - Jean Baptiste Mathey. This artist from Dijon was originally skilled as a painter and obtained the architectural qualification during his more than twenty years long stay in Rome. On his arrival to Prague in the year 1675, he demonstrated the architectonic expression of the Roman top baroque academism here, thus fundamentally inspiring the Czech architecture before the year 1700. Just Jean Baptiste Mathey probably admitted the Aichel's eldest son Jan Blazej to apprenticeship. The physical handicap of Jan Blazej disabled him to get trained in his father's physically demanding craft. However, the young Santini had already obviously been familiarized with the intellectual factor of the stonecutting work within the meaning of precise structures in spirit of the contemporary descriptive geometry from his father's workshop.

The young Santini acquired sense of perfection of the monastic architectonic forms and composition layouts with Mathey without doubt as well as the enlightenment about the up-to-date development of the Roman creation and surely also the desire for the direct Italian artistic experience. Together with Mathey, he probably got into contact with the Prague's Theatine college for which Mathey designed the Church of Virgin Mary Oetting in the today's street Nerudova in Mala Strana. Evidently early after the Mathey's departure for France in summer of 1695, his skilled apprentice set for an apprenticeship journey southwards. It is doubtless that he visited Vienna, Pasau in the middle Europe and passed to Lombardia through the alpine valleys where completion (in the Gothic style) of the Gothic cathedral in Milano attracted his attention. During his stay in Torino in the neighbouring Savoy he got acquainted with the buildings of the Theatine priest and an ingenious mathematician, theologian and architect Guarino Guarini. Guarini also occupied himself theoretically with the Gothic architecture and we can find structural Gothicism in his works. The core topic of his buildings aesthetics is the intentional, complicated and highly impressive work with the light.

The destination of his wandering was undoubtedly Rome. However, he did not take up the art of the artists who had influenced his masters there, but he was deeply concerned for the work of the one-generation-older solitary genius of the Roman baroque - Francesco Borromini. His unique artistic expression joined together the deep knowledge of the antique architecture of the Roman Empire, the Gothic architecture (when he got skilled during construction of the Milano's Cathedral) and the individual approach to the architectural work exceeding the time limits in many respects. It provides the Borromini's buildings with a form of unique, even enigmatical constructions that cannot be compared with any other artworks. Knowledge and deep understanding of the principles of the Borromini's architecture influenced the aesthetics of the Santini's buildings insomuch that he can be considered the only real successor of the great Roman master. It seems that Santini's knowledge of the top Gothic architecture he had obtained in Prague in his youth enabled him to understand the artistic message of the geniuses of the Italian radical baroque - Borromini and Guarini. This knowledge was not limited only to the shape "particularity" of the Gothic morphology but was based on deep understanding of the design logic as well as the aesthetic order of the cathedral architecture.

When Jan Blazej Santini Aichel started his design work in 1700, his art 1700 represented the mentally logic synthesis of exclusive inspirations that the young master was able to develop and transform within his own and creatively unique artwork in a free and individual way.

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