(bapt Wilten, nr Innsbruck, 14 Feb 1675; d Vorau, Styria, 9 May 1731). Austrian painter and draughtsman. His early influences were probably from the Tyrolean artists Egid Schor, Kaspar Waldmann and Johann Josef Waldmann (1676–1712) and, in Vienna, from Johann Michael Rottmayr and Matthias Steinl. Hackhofer was in Vienna from 1704 to 1706, where he drew some of the plates for the series of engravings (1705) dedicated to Emperor Joseph I (reg 1678–1711) as hereditary ruler. From 1708 until his death he held the post of Official Painter to the Augustine abbey in Vorau. His reputation as one of the most original and progressive Baroque artists in the province of Styria is based on his frescoes, while his panels are less important. His early works, a ceiling fresco depicting the Trinity in the Marktkirche at Vorau and the Holy Order on the ceiling of the chapter house in the monastery there (both 1708), reveal his Austrian training but also show an influence from High Baroque art in Rome: it is possible that he spent some time in Italy, but there is no proof of this. His major commission was for the complete decoration of the Festenburg near Vorau, carried out in 1709–15, 1720 and 1723. In 1710 he painted the walls, side altars and ceiling of the Katharinenkirche, which had been installed in the medieval building. The ceiling, depicting the Assumption of St Catherine, creates the illusion of glimpsing vistas of open sky through clouds and borrows from Rottmayr’s ceiling fresco in the Jesuit church of St Matthias, Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). In six of the chapels that were installed within the Festenburg, Hackhofer’s illusionistic techniques were carried to the point of trompe l’oeil: he skilfully integrated his frescoes and paintings of the Martyrdom of St Catherine and other subjects and the sculptures of the Salzburg wood-carver Johann Fenest into his overall concept. His inspiration for this work may have come from the designs of Viennese theatre painters and from Gaudenzio Ferrari’s chapel of the Crucifixion (c. 1520–26) in the Sacromonte in Varallo, Italy. Another major commission was for the decoration of the interior of the sacristy of the Stiftspfarrkirche in Vorau with depictions of the Passion, the Last Judgement and the Damned (1715–16). This programme was done in a similar manner to that of the Katharinenkirche in Festenburg. Some of his late ceilings—the Wallfahrtskirche ‘Maria Hasel’ in Peggau, done in 1718, the Friedhofkapellen in Wenigzell, done in 1721, and his frescoes in Peggau, executed c. 1724—show painted, simulated architecture closer in spirit to the work of Andrea Pozzo. His pupil and successor Josef Georg Mayr (1707–44), from Vorau, continued his tradition.