Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 13. (Budapest, 1993)

ZÁDOR Anna: Csernyánszky Mária, a barát szemével

new acquisitions of the museum, and wrote a study bout the Medici tapestries, which was later translated into several languages. After such a promising rebeginning, however, history baffled her activities; the new political regime - obviously in order to get rid of those members of the museum staff who had been active in the previous era - started a legal process on the basis of trumed-up charges against the director of the museum, and his most important colleague, Maria Csernyánszky. Both of them were soon dismissed, although it was evident that there could be no legal objection of any kind to her research work. The tragic events are aggravât by the fact that Csernyánszky has not been rehabilitated ever since, which is an unforgivable negligence, also on behalf of the art historians, including myself. Although we have tried several times in different ways and in different fields, our efforts obviously lacked the necessary agrcssivity. To my mind, this was a failure of the leaders of this area rather than that of Csernyánszky. She was respected by everybody - even by her enemies if she had any - for being absolutely beyond reproach. She had never talked about this injustice and tried to contribute to works which were regarded impersonal: for example she participated in team work in which there was room for different persons with different personalities. Such a collective task was, for example, the four volumes of the Art Dictionary, first published in 1965. Hapi wrote the entries concerning applied arts, first of all textile art, for each volume. These showed her usual thorougncss, and she managed to handle this refractory material so successfully that the quality of her entries equal that of the entries on the fine arts. Then she joined a team commissioned to produce a work that required great archival expertise and meticulous care. The study was published under the title Urbaria et Conscriptiones by the Research Group for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The first volume appeared in 1970, the fourth which was the last with her contribution in 1984. Besides this demanding task she was also a member of the group formed to produce the topographies of historic monuments in Hungary. In this case, too, she was in charge of her special field. When the climate of cultural politics changed for the better, she gradually returned to the applied arts. From 1979 onwards she regularly published in Ars Decorativa (the annual of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts), and participated in compiling the catalogue of the successful exhibition about King Matthias, organized first in Vienna, then in Budapest. She wrote a separate study about Renaissance chasubles with Italian embroidery for the 1985 number of Művészettörténeti Értesítő (Studies on Art History, a periodical). She seemed to start an entirely new stage of research activity, at least, that is what we hoped. Unfortunately her decaying health hindered the progress of this period. I can hardly remember anyone who, given the preceding events, managed to avoid passivity incited by anger. Hapi, on the other hand, participated in all scholarly tasks she was given with the greatest dedication and produced first class articles. Her consciousness as a researcher and a human being protected her from cheap solutions. Her extraordinary personality and unshakcable harmony were apparent in everything related to her. Her career should be a model, in this respect as well, for her successors.