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RIED, Benedikt - b. ~1454 , d. ~1534 Louny - WGA

RIED, Benedikt

(b. ~1454 , d. ~1534 Louny)

Benedikt Ried (also Rejt or Rieth), German architect, active in Bohemia. There is little documented information about his life. According to some of them, he came to Prague as a military engineer to rebuild the Prague Castle fortification. He became the leading medieval architect in Bohemia who built the Vladislav Hall (1493-1515) in Prague Castle, St. Barbara’s Church, Kutna Hora, (c. 1482) and other buildings in Late Gothic and early Renaissance style.

The Vladislav Hall

Prague Castle was one of the imperial capitals. The Vladislav Hall comes at the very end of the medieval period, and the architect Benedikt Ried created a fantasy on Gothic vaulting, with ribs meandering and abruptly stopping short in apparent mockery of any functional purpose.

The shift from the Gothic style to the Renaissance in Bohemia is visible in the architecture of the leading late 15th-century architect in Prague, Benedikt Ried. The interior of his Vladislav Hall, with its intertwining ribbon vaults, represents the climax of the late Gothic.

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