Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 29. (2001)

A BUDAI KIRÁLYI PALOTA MINT ÉPÍTÉSZETI EGYÜTTES; A PALOTA ÉPÍTÉSTÖRTÉNETE A LEGÚJABB KUTATÁSOK ALAPJÁN - Farbaky Péter: A budai királyi palota Mátyás és a Jagellók idején 205-216

PÉTER FARBAKY THE ROYAL PALACE IN BUDA AT THE TIME OF MATTHIAS CORVINUSAND THE JAGELLÓ Summary Founded in the 13th century and developed by the Anjou and the Emperor Sigismund, the residence of the Hungarian kings was rebuilt in the 1470s by Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490) in the late Gothic, and the early Renaissance styles. The masters who implemented the imported Italian art project were Florentine artists. According to Vasari, Chimenti Camicia, the legnaiuolo who became an architect, was appointed supervisor of the work. The primary exemplum in the first phase of the construction must have been the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence whose interior had been recently reshaped. The task was similar in Buda, for which new, Renaissance door and window frames, cornices, wood panel ceilings, and majolica floors were made. The Renaissance hanging garden above the cisterna regia, on the sunny side of the palace, must also have been built by Camicia, possibly between 1482-1484. The new floor of the western palace wing must have been added in the second phase of reconstruction, as well as the Renaissance arcades on the 1st and 2nd floors. The lower one was closed by a semi-circular loggia, the upper one by architraves, both enclosing a wood panel ceiling featuring the signs of the zodiac. Red marble ornaments apart, the parapet consisted of a balustrade made of so-called Buda loam. Using the foundations of a Sigismund-period building flanking the second palace courtyard (to the north of the main ornamental courtyard) —the Sigismund Court— on the eastern side, the so-called Unfinished Palace was begun at the end of Matthias' reign, in the late 1480s. According to surviving images and texts its façade was symmetrical, probably with stone cross windows. In the main axis of the court front a double staircase led to the bronze main gate adorned with sculptures portraying Hercules' deeds. The main hall of the palace remained unfinished, hence the palace's name. King Matthias' successor, Wladislaw II of Jagelló (1490-1516), who was also king of Bohemia, sent his leading master builder, Benedikt Ried, to Buda, to aid in "transplanting" the new Renaissance style to the Bohemian royal residence, the Hradjin, in Prague. Ried is supposed to have worked in Buda also. The complex, pyramid roof elements of the former building on the south-eastern side of the Sigismund Court closely resemble Ried's Bohemian buldings. Wladislaw's most significant architectural contribution was the late-Gothic conversion of the upper palace chapel. The chapel space was covered by a new reticulated vault. The surviving, characteristic, truncated, sarmentose wood carvings might have been made for here. It certainly has many an analogy in Bohemia, e.g. in the oratory of St Vitus' Cathedral in Prague. Crafted around 1502 for the wedding of Wladislaw and the French Anne de Foix, the ornamental gate and the balustrades of the Unfinished Palace attest to the survival of the Renaissance style in the history of place construction. In 1541 the mediaeval palace was occupied for a century and a half by the Turks. It was during their time in power, and the siege launched to recapture Buda (1686), that the medieval royal residence was damaged beyond repair.