Hofburg Imperial Palace

Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach , born Johann Bernhard Fischer was probably the most influential Austrian architect of the Baroque period. Architectural tastes throughout the Habsburg Empire were profoundly influenced by his ideas, as articulated in A Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture ,... one of the first and most popular comparative studies of world architecture. Born near Graz, Johann Fischer was trained in the workshop of his father, a provincial artisan, before departing for Rome at the precocious age of 16. He spent the following sixteen years in Italy. In Rome he joined the workshop of his fellow Austrian Johann Paul Schor and of the great Bernini, who gave him ample opportunities to study both ancient and modern sculpture and architecture. He then moved to Naples, where he was reported to have amassed a considerable fortune serving the Spanish viceroy. Back in Austria in 1687, Fischer von Erlach was installed as a fashionable and sought-after architect.
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Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, also Fischer von Erlach the younger was an Austrian architect of the baroque, Rococo and baroque classicism. He was the son of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. He continued some projects of his father, in particular, the Karlskirche in Vienna, the... Hofbibliothek , and the Winterreitschultrakt of the Hofburg. However, after his father, he also worked on many palaces, castles, and churches, as well as numerous monuments, gardens, tombs, and altars . He first developed his skills in his father's Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach workshop. In 1711, he worked on several of his father's commissions and also helped complete the publication "Draft of a historical architecture"; whose four volumes inspired many later designs. Through this work, Joseph Emanuel came into contact both with the architecture of his and earlier times and with Berne, his father's noble order.
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