Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 102-103. (Budapest, 2005)

ANNUAL REPORT 2005 - A 2005. ÉV - LÁSZLÓ TÖRÖK: After the Pharaos: Treasures of Coptic Art from Egyptian Collections

The second, large unit presented artworks from the fourth-sixth centuries A.D. The figurai and ornamental carvings in stone, wood or bone, fragments of painted ceilings, bronze vessels and textiles evoke the luxury of elite households and the quality of the aristocratic "good life". Reading their figurai decoration, the visitor could also appreciate the political, religious and ethical ideals that were central to the aristocratic self-image formulated in the visual arts. A remarkable group of objects in this unit

—architectural carvings with figurai decoration

—originates from elite funerary chapels at Oxyrhynchos (el Bahnasa) and Heracleopolis Magna (Ahnas). The figurai decoration of these carvings presented a pictorial discourse not only on the Classical education of the elite, but also on the virtues by which it hoped to achieve eternal life. The works of art in this second unit of the exhibition PROCESSIONAL ICON WITH ST THEODORE. also demonstrated the unity of the pagan CAIRO, COPTIC MUSEUM and Christian elite of the fourth-fifth centuries A.D., and some of them indicated that art objects were produced in the same elite workshops both for pagan and Christian clients. Some carvings in bone represented the output of workshops producing for a humbler clientele. They indicated remarkable connections between "high art" and the taste of artisans satisfying simpler demands: e.g., a unique carving covering the surface of the fragment of a bovine tibia copies a grand model representing enthroned late Roman co-emperors and their attendants. The third unit of objects demonstrated the emergence of Christian art in Egypt, the stylistic trends unfolding in the course of the fifth-eighth centuries A.D., and the survival of certain iconographical and stylistic elements until the eighteenth century