ASAM, Egid Quirin

Bavarian architect and decorator who worked together with his brother Cosmas Damian (1686-1739). They studied in Rome (1711-14) and developed further the dramatic effects of light and illusionism with which Italian Baroque artists, notably Bernini and Pozzo, had experimented. Both men worked as architects, but Cosmas Damian was also a prolific fresco painter, and Egin Quirin was a sculptor and stuccoist. They worked best as a team, and their ecclesiastical buildings were the supreme expression of the Bavarian delight in decorative display; architecture, painting and sculpture unite to set a scene in which light and colour are the chief actors. The best known of their churches is that of St John Nepomuk, Munich (1733-46). The brothers themselves paid for the building (which was attached to Egid Quirin’s house), and it is often referred to simply as the ‘Asamkirche’.