The technique of stucco-work was already in use around 7,000 BCE, and flourished during the
Italian Renaissance. In Germany it appeared for the first time around 1545 CE in the
Landshut Residence. A passage in the
Historico-Topographica Descriptio of Michael Wenig (1701) suggests that the residents of the villages Gaispoint and Haid, which belonged to Wessobrunn Abbey, worked predominantly as stucco-workers and bricklayers, which would imply a tradition of long standing. In Bavaria, an alliance between native bricklayers and stonemasons and Italian stucco-workers developed at the end of the 16th century. In the 17th century Wessobrunn developed into the most important center for stucco-work in Europe, and its craftsmen received commissions, not only in south Germany, but also in France, Poland, Hungary, and Russia. Their Italian competitors were unable to keep up. Around 1750, a general decrease in building activity set in, as most of the great
Rococo and pilgrimage churches had been completed. In addition, a new wave of
neo-classical architecture between 1775 and 1790 lessened the prestige of the stucco-artist. The "Society of Stucco-workers", founded in 1783, still had 68 members; in 1798 there were 27, and by 1864 only 9. The masterpiece of the Wessobrunner School is the
Wies Church (from 1744), built and stuccoed by Dominikus Zimmermann and frescoed by his brother, Johann Baptist. In this building, even architectural elements become, as it were, ornament. The arches of the choir arcade are in fact monumental bisected rocaille-cartouches. To be sure, only Dominikus Zimmermann made the leap to this uncompromising architectural application of the rocaille. As Bavarian artists began to stray from sculptural stucco and the taste of the time demanded more sobriety and functionality, the Wessobrunner School gradually lost its reason for being. The reach of the Wessobrunner stucco-workers may today be observed in numerous European countries, and above all in western Austria. == References ==