Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The Parish Church of the Sacred Heart, 1933

pairs of pillars has narrow aisles and side chapels. Its aesthetic character is determined by the symmetrically arranged masses of its vertical and horizon­tal, travertine-covered prisms and the surfaces of glass window-panes turn­ing into quarter-cylindrical segments above, which separate the prisms from one another. The skylighted chancel is included in—and accentuated by—the largest, detached, prism of the complex. Its slightly protruding, segmental wall on the west is cut through by a stained-glass window. The importance in archi­tectural history of this original appearance, which was way ahead of its time, was extolled by Julianna P. Szűcs. The glass window, reconstructed after the war by its creator, Lili Sztehló, shows, in accordance with the name of the church, Christ standing in a halo of grace (mandorla) and pointing at his own heart. Most of the artwork decorating the church was made in the studios of the "Roman" school. Reacting to the theories of the avant-garde, the Italianate (novecento) school sought to achieve a classical style of sorts. The pictures on the two side-walls of the chancel commemorating the founder of the Hungarian state and church King St. Stephen I were painted on alumini­um by Vilmos Aba-Novák in 1938. In the same year he painted the frescos depict­■ View of the church hrom the óoutheait 51

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