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

Rugänesti, Rumania). In Küsmöd (now Cusmed, Rumania), and Homoródszcntmárton (now Martinis, Rumania) fragments of jambs have also been found. The general use of terracottas suggests the existence of a workshop in one of the nearby towns, which supplied material for the villages in the vicinity, too. We must not forget, however, that our knowledge of the use of terracottas in Transylvania is one-sided: while we posses detailed information concerning the Udvarhelyszék region, other areas, like Maroszék, Csíkszék or Fogaras are less known to us since they have not been in the focus of scientific interest. Nevertheless, we know that terracotta pieces were in the localities here, too; mention is being made of them

—for example, in the Convent of the Pauline Order at Alvinc (now Vintu de Jos, Rumania).

105 Because of this, it is not possible to delineate the geographical area within which terracotta pieces were used in Transylvania. The same can be said of the Alföld (the Great Hungarian Plain). Although Kálmán Szabó published terracotta rib among the ruins of the Parish Church of Felsömonostor, we know only of two edifices in the region where terracotta pieces were used: the Church of Francicans at Szeged and the Castle of Bács (now Bac, Jugoslavia). The Franciscans built their new church in Szeged at the end of the fifteenth century. The vaulting was constnicted of terracotta elements (today these can be seen the way they were rebuilt in the seventeenth century), just as was the window tracery, now demolished. Some other fragments presently in the Szeged Museum suggest that there may have been other buildings constructed of this material in the town. In Bács, three decorated tiles were found among the ruins of the gate-tower in the nineteenth century.

106 Having reached the end of our survey we can say that in the time we have suggested as a possible date for the manufacture of the terracotta pieces of Buda there was no similar building incorporating such elements standing in any other part of the country. Although an increasing use of terracotta pieces can be detected from the second part of the fifteenth century onwards, it is also to be noted that they were of a different type and were used with less variety than in Buda earlier on. The bricks outside Buda were used in place of stone carvings; both their form and their style correspond exactly to contemporary local stonework. With the exception, perhaps, of some simple cornice fragments, no analogies of the pieces of Buda have been found elsewhere. The bricks in Buda are more varied both with regard to style and to function than any other group known in Hungary, and this leads us to suspect that the building they once decorated was similarly unparalleled among other terracotta constructions in the country. Stone carving that might be analogy for the terracotta pieces are unknown in Buda, let alone in other parts of Hungary. This suggests that the bricks were at variance with the local building tradition. No interrelation whatsoever can be traced between stone-carving practice and the manufacture of terracotta pieces. Only a few tiny details indicate that brick-makers resorted to local stone-carving practices of the period. Neither does stonework of this period in Buda show any motifs that can be interpreted as derivation from terracotta decoration. 2. Connections with the architecture of Northern Italy The negative conclusions of our survey of the Hungarian material has led us to suspect that the terracotta pieces were produced by immigrant masters. The question now is: Where might they have come from? There were three different regions in Europe where terracotta was commonly used in the Late Gothic architecture. In the north so-called red brick Gothic extended over a vast territory from the Baltic Sea and North Sea to Flanders in the west, and to Poland and Silesia, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg in the east.

107 Other regions are south Germany: Bavaria and Swabia along the upper reaches of the Danube, and further Toulouse and Albi in the south of France, and the surroundings of Toledo in Spain.

108 At last we know of a very specific terracotta architecture in northern Italy, primarily on the plain of the river Po.

109 The architecture of all these three regions differs fundamentally with regard to style, as well as in the use of terracotta elements. Thus, when we begin to start making comparisons with the pieces from Buda, it is easy to see that they have the most in common with the Italian group (Figs 47-54). The ornate window frames and this type of floral ornamnct appears only in northern Italy. Similar pieces among those found in Buda are not isolated finds, on the contrary, they display a great variety. These patterns are basically different from the decoration found elsewhere in Hungary, as indeed they differ from that common in the north. The latter were essentially archaic patterns, i.e. palmettos — well known in Romanesque style times but out of fashion in Hungary during the Gothic period. This was not the case in