CHRISTIAN, Johann Josef

The picture shows an angel from the south crossing altar in Ottobeuren Abbey.

Joseph Christian was born in Riedlingen (W�rttemberg) and played a major role in the decoration of this church, renovated by the Abbot Rupert Ness in 1764 for the celebration of the millennium of Ottobeuren. Christian achieved a sensitive and coherent ensemble in the decoration of the church, which offers an excellent example of successful collaboration with other artists. He exploited his gifts to the full without ever overreaching himself, working with the humility and conviction of a servant of both art and religion.

The most grandiose of the monasteries rebuilt in Germany in the eighteenth century is the Benedictine Monastery of Ottobeuren near the frontier between Swabia and Bavaria; several architect (Simpert Kraemer, Joseph Effner, Johann Michael Fischer) worked on it and it was completed with all the buildings originally projected. The innumerable statues (mainly by Johann Josef Christian), ornamental motifs (by Johann Michael Feuchtmayr), and paintings (ceiling frescoes by Johann Jakob Zeiller) in the church join together rhythmically in that symphonic unity to which the Germans have given the name ‘Gesamtkunstwerk.’ The huge monastery, of which the church forms a part, is a kind of summing up of German Rococo.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 19 minutes):

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme

The stalls and woodwork of the organ in the “Swabian Escorial” were done by Josef Christian, sculptor, Martin Hormann, cabinetmaker and Karl Josef Riepp, organ-maker, who together created one of the most beautiful musical instruments of all time. The relationship of masses and supports on the triple-storied organ, beneath the frescoed vault, the exuberance of forms in the cabinetwork and stuccoes, the variety in the sculptural vocabulary for the atlantes and the gilded reliefs - in themselves suggesting a harmony appropriate to 18th-century musical forms - combine in the ideal, total masterpiece that was to transmit the monks’ prayers to the Heavens. It is the only 18th-century organ that still preserves entire its original form.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Concert for Organ in F major op. 4 No. 4

Contrasting with the dynamic exuberance of the atlantes and the overall decoration is the calmer style appearing in the nine gilded wood reliefs representing scenes from the life of St Benedict. The sculptor conveys the idea of deep space through the perspective flight of the architecture and the variation in the depth of the relief, from forms almost in outline to forms modelled in the round. The restraint and gracefulness of his subtly modelled surfaces, distantly reminiscent of Ghiberti, create an intimate atmosphere in which is revealed the Rococo feeling for the supernatural and the ecstatic.

Johann Josef Christian, like Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer, another sculptor in Upper Swabia in the mid-eighteenth century, used plaster as his main sculptural medium. He occasionally collaborated with Johann Michael Feuchtmayer, and owed his considerable reputation to his work at the abbey church of Zwiefalten and Ottobeuren.