Mikó Árpád – Verő Mária - Jávor Anna szerk.: Mátyás király öröksége, Késő reneszánsz művészet Magyarországon (16–17. század) 2. kötet (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/4)
The English Summary of Volumes I—II
VI. The architectural formula of the all'antica doorway In his surveys of historic monuments, József Könyöki reproduced drawings of the doorways of two town houses in Pozsony (Bratislava). The doors are fairly close to each other in style, even though some fifty years separate their construction. The earlier doorway has a more elaborate design and an inscription telling that it was built by Valentinus Ehrenleitner in 1595. The list mentions the house as Domus Consilii regii, taken from the doorway inscription. Each element and the overall form of the doorway display a grandiose conception, with elegant diamond-cut stones and Tuscan columns. The large acanthus flowers filling the triangle of the arch form the only figurative decoration, otherwise it was a puritanical version of late Renaissance doorways. The other Könyöki drawing is of the doorway of the Segner Curia. This building survives today, at Michalská ulica 7. There are two sets of oriels reaching up two storeys, with the door opening between them. It is also built of diamond-cut stones, but the mouldings are less complex. This is not the only known doorway in Bratislava built in the all'antica style, and there are examples — if not so large and handsome - in other towns. One survives from the 17 th century in nearby Sopron, and there are some in Győr. The monumental doorways on town houses are echoed perhaps more appropriately in castles and grand houses. It is unlikely, however, that the castle gates in the area could have been the precursors; the formula was completely general throughout Central Europe. Town houses were based on town houses. Much has been written of the spread of the rustic doorway type on the western fringes of the Kingdom of Hungary. What were town houses in Transylvania like? Kolozsvár was in the key position. The city of treasure was in its heyday in the second half of the 16 th century, and this can be read on the facades of the town houses. The classical-origin formula was the same everywhere, the question as to which is to be regarded as late Renaissance and which as early Baroque, where the boundary is to be drawn, is another question. Nonetheless, set against all of these many doorways, of many different types, the two Pozsony doorways stand on their own: only they feature the diamond-cut stones. VII. Wooden ceilings and the Floral Renaissance : catching up with national tradition? It is well known that the earliest surviving painted wooden ceiling in Hungary bearing a date on one of its panels is from Ádámos (Adämu§, in the former county of Nagyküküllő), made in 1526, the year of the Battle of Mohács. Four Transylvania Renaissance wooden ceilings or similar articles are known of from the first half of the 16th century: one in Gogánváralja (Gogan Varolea), made between 1503 and 1519 (probably closer to 1503); a fragment of a gallery, probably from before Mohács, in Homoródszentpéter (Petreni); and the latest, fragments of a ceiling from Vasasszentegyed (Sântajude), made in 1543. It is not surprising that the Ádámos ceiling was transferred to the Ethnological Collection in the late 1930s, although there is unfortunately no record of who re-classified it as a work of folk art; in Jolán Balogh's monumental Transylvania Renaissance of 1943, it is firmly set in the framework of grand art, but of course the Renaissance roots of Hungarian folk art all featured there. It is only a few years since similar pieces to the Ádámos ceiling turned up in Transylvania. They are not identical, but similar in motif and composition, particularly the rosettes made up of palmettes. The colours are not so similar, but those on the Ádámos panels became translucent after an earlier conservation, and the strong colours of those from Miklóstelke (Cloasterf ) may give some idea of how colourful those from Ádámos originally were. The proliferation of painted wooden ceilings and furniture continued into the 18th and even more the 19th centuries, and after a certain point is not possible to draw a line between folk art and grand art. Saxon research has found the Renaissance roots of a coherent history in Miklóstelke running up to the 19th century, just as Hungarian art historiography had found them in Ádámos. But there are Late Gothic rosettes in Ádámos as well as all'antica. Certainly, the painted wooden ceiling full of all'antica designs was a widespread phenomenon. There seems little point in attempting a sharp division in the late medieval period between "Hungarian" and "Saxon" remains in Transylvania. A bigger problem is that wooden ceilings do not form a continuous chronological series. There are none at all from the second half of the 16 th century, and only a few from the first half of the 17 th . There are written records of wooden ceilings in royal residences, but the ceilings themselves have all disappeared. Their reflection is not to be sought in the later ceilings of Reformed Churches. The present state of knowledge suggests that only the — recently restored — sounding board of the pulpit of the Farkas Street Church in Cluj gives some idea of the true standard of what was made for royalty. The pulpit of the Farkas Street Church is the key item of the Hungarian style of the "Transylvanian Floral Renaissance". It is known that the decorative reliefs of that structure were carved work not by the Hungarian master Benedek, but two Saxons - Elias Nicolai and Hannes Lew Rehner — and the sounding board by the prince's Polish woodcarver; the motifs are taken from European Late Renaissance ornamentation. It is thus clear that earlier Hungarian art historiography was working on unsound premises when, on the subject of old Transylvania, it formulated the "floral Renaissance" concept. A concept which was perhaps based more on wish than analysis. Transylvania — and the whole Kingdom of Hungary — promises a host of further discoveries for art historians of the early modern age. If we can let go of the old, emotionally loaded ideas, the intellectual adventure can only get more exciting.
