Haris Andrea szerk.: Koldulórendi építészet a középkori Magyarországon Tanulmányok (Művészettörténet - műemlékvédelem 7. Országos Műemlékvédelmi Hivatal,)

Buzás Gergely – Laszlovszky József - Papp Szilárd - Szekér György – Szőke Mátyás: A visegrádi ferences kolostor

The Franciscan Monastery at Visegrád Gergely Búzás - József Laszlovszky — Szilárd Papp — György Szekér - Mátyás Szőke Using the wealth of surviving documents, the building, the remains of which had been found south of the royal palace at Visegrád, was successfully identified in 1986 as a Franciscan Monastery belonging to the Observant branch. In the following years, during 1987 and 1988, we studied the precise plan and architectural history of the monastery and church in four sections. The Observant of Bosnia were invited to settle in Visegrád already before 1425 by King Sigismund, who also gave them the Chapel of St. George in the royal palace of the Anjous. After 1425, at the time when the monastery received papal confirmation, a large-scale construction work began. The Church of the Virgin Mary, a vaulted building with a relatively short choir, was completed, together with the cloister adjacent to it from the north. The chronology of construction of the other wings is still unknown. The surviving carved stones can be linked to the Czech architecture of the 1400s. The Chapel of St. George was later deserted and the gradually decaying building was finally pulled down in 1511-1512, at the time of the reconstruction of the monastery under the reign of the kings of the Jagelló dynasty. Around the middle of the 15th century the condition of the monastery also began to deteriorate, to such an extent that in 1473 King Matthias already had plans for its complete reconstruction, plans which never in fact materialised. In the first decade of the 16th century King Ulászló II embarked on the renovation of the building. The old choir was replaced with a larger one, while the cloister was vaulted, alongside with the chapel in the eastern wing. The monastery buildings were given Renaissance window frames. The renovation was near completion when works on a new tower began in 1511. The Observants held a provincial assembly in their freshly renovated monastery in 1513. We are informed by a document written in 1516 that the Observant Monastery of Visegrád was under the jurisdiction of the custodia of Esztergom. A great deal is preserved about the life of the monastery in the records of the 1530s; it was last mentioned in 1540, just a few years before the Turkish occupation of the town in 1544. The walls of the abandoned monastery remained visible for centuries afterwards; the ruins were finally pulled down in the 18th century by the people of the village settled there. Those vaults of the monastery which were built in the first decade of the 16th century have a special significance. Two different types of rib moulding, as well as some curved components, were used for the vault of the new choir, which was built with the most up-to-date technique seen in Hungarian monuments. The stellar vault of the chapel was of a more regular type, while te simplest - although least known - type of vault was used for the cloister. The master in charge of the construction seems to have studied under Benedikt Ried and Hanns Spiess, who worked on the reconstruction of the Castle of Prague, as ordered by King Ulászló II. (Apparently, it was the latter of the two masters who had closer ties with our master.) The vaults of the monastery at Visegrád show some resemblance to some of the vaults in the royal Palace of Buda, such as the curving vaults of the chapel of the upper palace. Our master probably also worked on the