Considered the most significant architect of the Austrian Baroque, Jakob Prandtauer (1660-1726) built the grandiose Stift Melk (Melk Abbey) in collaboration with his nephew, Joseph Munggenast (1680-1741). The interior of the monastery’s collegiate church integrates the Italian high Baroque with the German and Austrian late Baroque style. The church also features ornamental elements in the Rococo style, which began to supersede the Baroque in German and Austrian architecture in the 1720 and 1730s. Rococo was generally limited to secular buildings, but it occasionally appeared in sacred architecture in the southern portion of the Holy Roman Empire. Photograph by Jochen Remmer, undated.