Hell from the Four Last Things
by STAMMEL, Josef Thaddäus, Bronzed wood, height c. 250 cm
The artist’s extraordinarily expressive figures in the collegiate library, in which local stylistic traditions are combined with formal concepts of the Italian Baroque, are based on allegories of transitoriness and motifs of Vanity. The allegorical figures representing the “Four Last Things,” including the Hell, seriously admonished the visitor to the library to be mindful of the earthly power of death and to put the books at the service of future spiritual salvation.