The Austrian baroque architect Jakob Prandtauer (1660-1726) is famed chiefly for his monastic and religious buildings, notably the abbey and church of Melk.

Jakob Prandtauer, born in mid-July 1660 in Stanz in the Tirol, was the son of a master mason, and he too learned the trade. He also studied sculpture and architecture, however, for by the time he was 19 he was working as a sculptor in Sankt Pölten, a city in Lower Austria not far from Vienna. By 1700 he was a master builder (Baumeister), working on many projects in Sankt Pölten.

From 1701 until his death Prandtauer worked for the monastery of Melk on the Danube in Lower Austria, totally rebuilding the church and all the buildings of the huge monastic complex, one of the largest of its kind. Like his great contemporaries Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, Prandtauer turned...