SCHLAUN, Johann Conrad

German architect. Most of his works are in Westphalia, his earliest buildings were uncomplicated churches. In 1719 he was appointed Land Surveyor of Münster by Clemens August (1700-1761), Prince Bishop of Paderborn and Münster, who encouraged him to travel, first to Würzburg where he gained further experience under Balthasar Neumann, before visiting Italy and France in order to broaden his architectural knowledge.

He designed Schloss Brühl (1725-28, later much changed by Neumann and others) in Franco-German BaroqueGLOSSARYThe period in art history from about 1600 to about 1750. In this sense the term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies. style, and the enchanting brick 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. hunting lodge of Clemenswerth (1736-50), with a two-storey building at the centre and a ring of eight detached pavilions, one of which contained a convent and chapelGLOSSARYa small separate place for worship, either part of a large church or a separate building.. Among his most successful palaces were the Erbdrostenhof, Münster (1749-57), on a triangular urban site with a concave façadeGLOSSARYthe front or principal face of a building, especially one elaborately constructed; a blind façade is a façade that is purely decorative and does not relate to the structure of the building. fronting the "cour d'honneur" and with a convex garden-elevation, the whole on an ingenious plan with irregularly shaped rooms. The Bishop's Palace, called the Schloss, Münster (1767-73), contained elements derived from designs by Neumann, notably the curved frontispiece and rounded corners, and made use of rose-coloured brick with stone dressing.

Schlaun's own dwellings, the Rüschhaus, near Münster (1745-48), and the Schlaunhaus, Münster (1753-55), both employ brick, the former looking like a Westphalian rural farm-building with a Rococo centrepiece, and the latter with a massive two-storey rusticated archGLOSSARYThe pointed arch is widely regarded as the main identifiable feature of Gothic architecture (distinct from the round arch of the Romanesque period). The three most common Gothic arches are the Equilateral, Lancet and Tudor. in the middle. His Clemenskirche, Münster (1745-53) is a rotunda on a triangular site constructed on a six-pointed star of superimposed triangles, clearly influenced by Borromini's church of Sant'Ivo in Rome.