Vestibule

The west entrance is orna­ment­ed with a tra­di­tion­al dec­o­ra­tive pro­gramme of apoc­a­lyp­tic scenes, the cen­tral fea­ture being F. E. Asam’s ceil­ing paint­ing of the “Last Judg­ment” (1745). Around it are grouped his uncle’s stuc­co reliefs of the “Four Last Things”: Death (whose arrows none can escape); Judg­ment (with trum­pet, book, sword, and scales); Hell (with ser­pent, flames and torch­es); and at the tran­si­tion to the main part of the church, Heav­en (the soul sym­bol­ized by a heart look­ing at the Holy Trin­i­ty). Between these images, the “Four Sea­sons” (flow­ers for spring, sheaves and fruit for sum­mer, bare branch­es for autumn, and a stove for win­ter) express the tran­sience of earth­ly life. In both form and dec­o­ra­tion, the low vestibule antic­i­pates the ele­ments of the nave. Thus, the two mar­ble con­fes­sion­als by J. J. Kürschn­er (1736) – which bear F. A. Neu’s stuc­co busts of the typ­i­cal pen­i­tent saints Mary Mag­dalen and Peter (1751) – point to the heav­en­ly sphere depict­ed in the dome.