Horler Miklós: Budapest 1. budai királyi palota 1. Középkori idomtégla töredékek (Magyarország építészeti töredékeinek gyűjteménye 4. Budapest, 1995) (Magyarország építészeti töredékeinek gyűjteménye 4. Budapest, 1998)

András Végh: Medieval Terracotta finds from the royal Palace of Buda

In the 1953 study written jointly by László Gerevich, Imre Holl and Kornél Seitl, we read that most of the thirteenth century architectural finds excavated in the royal palace were terracotta pieces. The text refers to roughly 100 items

—half columns, fragments from cornices, and jambs; also 8 newly-discovered pieces were presented in illustrations. Reference was made to excavation process. There were three pits in which bricks were found among fifteenth century filling material, whereas in another one a terracotta capital was lifted from a Turkish fill.

9 Moreover, column fragments are mentioned, as having been laid in Turkish brick pavements. But in spite of all this, and surprisingly too, the authors proceed to date the pits with terracotta finds to the thirteenth century. In fact, it is being stressed that the fragments were lifted from closed assemblages and not deposits. There is, however, no exact reference given to the pits themselves. Here the controversy came, temporarily, to a halt. Although László Zolnay published an other article on the issue in 1961, the terracotta pieces were, apart from a short passage, hardly mentioned.'

1 In the article

— citing Géza Entz

—he referred to the pieces as having parallels in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century village churches (Csaroda, Küküllövár, Tompaháza); reference was made to József Csemegi's verbally expressed view on the fourteenth century origin of the pieces. However, Gerevich was, apparently, not concentrating on the terracotta fragments at that time. The case was different in his later survey of the excavations of the royal palace, in which Gerevich discussed all the terracotta pieces that had been unearthed.

12 He published the photographs of thirty different componant elements together with some reconstruction drawings. He specified the most important sites and stated that not a single fragment had been discovered in its original position. He reiterated his view that the majority of the bricks dated from the thirteenth century and suggested that they formed part of the earliest buildings to surround the Small Courtyard. According to Gerevich, the terracotta pieces of a later date came from that part of the palace complex which once incorporated the library, i.e. from the East Wing, south of the Chapel. In fact, he classified the fragments on a stylistic basis, creating three main groups in chronological order within a 150 years, between the mid-thirteenth century and the early fifteenth centuries. Group I in Gerevich's classification contained a reconstructed wall pier, fragments with floral ornamentation, and a coat-of-arms. According to Gerevich, the style of these fragments suggest their thirteenth century origin. While mentioning Italian parallels he also notes the fact that there was a tendency towards the archaic in Italian brick architecture, and says that examples with the same motifs can also be found in the fourteenth century. He assumes that the pieces originated in a workshop which was operating between the middle of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century. Gerevich's second group consists of the decorated jambs and cornices, crocket-decorated arch elements and other frame fragments. Gerevich finds the decoration and modelling of these pieces different from the decoration and modelling in the first group.

13 It is to be noted that his parallels for the ornamented jambs are taken from Italian "palazzo" façades and that he dated Group II to the fourteenth century. Group III, in Gerevich's assessment, originates from the end of the fourteenth century and contains all the other pieces, mainly structural elements and bricks with blind tracery decoration. Perhaps it was the blind tracery that led Gerevich to separate these bricks from those with floral decoration. While in the case of the first two groups he discovered Italian influence, in the third group he detected northern influence.

14 In the very same year, 1966, another book was published

—one in which the author's conclusions flatly contradicted the views expressed by Gerevich.

15 The work in question was Jolán Balogh's monograph dealing with the arts at the time of King Matthias I Corvinus (Hunyadi); this dated all the surviving terracotta pieces to that period, the second half of the fifteenth century. She was the first specialist to publish those terracottas which had been discovered by Hauszmann. Nevertheless, she concentrated exclusively on finding the parallells of the individual forms and the decoration.

16 On the basis of their form Balogh considered the Gothic pieces to be of a late date. In her view, the soft modelling of the pieces indicated the approaching Renaissance epoch. Like Gerevich, Balogh also reached for northern Italian, more precisely Lomabrdian, examples in her attempt at identifying the function of the individual pieces. In dating, she relied on written data about Lombard masons in Hungary in the 1460s. In 1971, László Gerevich returned again to the terracotta pieces. In his book dealing with the art of Buda and Pest in the Middle Ages, he summed up what he had written in his monographical work.

17 In this book he takes the view that there were two periods, the thirteenth century and the fourteenth century in which the pieces were made. The group he regarded as thirteenth century incorporated those terracotta pieces he had considered as such since 1953. lie also maintained his opnion as to their original location: the earliest buildings around the Small Courtyard, the Stephen's Tower and the East Wing, where he suspected the