BAUMGARTNER, Johann Wolfgang

German painter and etcher. He was born in Tyrol and he learned glass painting in Salzburg. He moved to Augsburg and worked as a glass painter. The ceiling painting in the SanctuaryGLOSSARYthe part of a church or temple containing the shrine; in Christian churches the choir and high altar. of the Holy Cross of the former Klosters Mountains is considered as his largest and most important work.

Posterity knows this versatile artist as a creator of large-scale decorative work for churches where frescoes merge seamlessly with the RococoGLOSSARYA style of design, painting, and architecture dominating the 18th century, often considered the last stage of the Baroque. Developing in the Paris townhouses of the French aristocracy at the turn of the 18th century, Rococo was elegant and ornately decorative, its mood lighthearted and witty. Louis XV furniture, richly decorated with organic forms, is a typical product. Leading exponents of the Rococo sryle included the French painters Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), and the German architect Johann Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753). Rococo gave way to Neo-classicism. architecture of the altarpieces. Baumgartner was also a prolific supplier of drawn and painted images for the major printmakers in the city of Augsburg.