Tüskés Anna (szerk.): Omnis creatura significans - Tanulmányok Prokopp Mária 70. születésnapjára (2009)
Köszöntő írások
Anna Tüskés Foreword This book is presented as a gift to Mária Prokopp, a prominent and influential figure in the field of art history. Her influence extends far beyond Hungary. Her up-to-date knowledge of international trends has always contributed to her work. Equally, her warm personality and friendliness contributed to the many international friendships she sustains. Besides being a great scholar, Mária Prokopp has distinguished herself as an outstanding professor and mentor. For her students and young colleagues, she has provided and continues to provide extraordinary support and guidance. The volume has two objectives. First, to provide a reflection on the enormous contribution to the history of art Mária Prokopp has made throughout her career. The second aim of this book is to thank Mária Prokopp for the beneficial and positive impact she has had on the academic community. It is a collection of articles written by her former students and colleagues who have had the privilege to study under her guidance or work with her over the last forty years. This volume provides a thorough analysis of some actual questions of Hungarian and European history of art, as well as history, geography, and history of literature and music. This book is intended as a gift by virtue of the studies contained within partly carried out for this special occasion, and partly deriving from the actual research domain of the authors. I hope that the present volume will be received warmly and that it may even reach a larger public. I met Mária Prokopp for the first time in the autumn of 1999 when I started to study history of art at University Eötvös Loránd, Budapest. I treasure the precious memories of three events from the following five years. The first one is a three-day-long excursion in East Slovakia when with some of the second class students and led by of Mária Prokopp, we visited the monuments of Kassa (Kosice), Eperjes (Presov), Bártfa (Bardejov), and Lőcse (Levoca). The second memory is a visit in the early Italian painting section of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, when Mária Prokopp called my attention to the two late I3th-cen- tury Italian Crucifixion panel paintings, which later constituted the subject matter of my MA thesis and for which reason I also started to learn Italian. My third memory is a one-week-long journey in Florence where some of our class participated in a Central European workshop organized by the Fondazione del Bianco in order to investigate and present the impacts and relations between Italy and our country. Together, the group of Budapest and that of Kolozsvár (Cluj- Napoca) discovered the monuments of Florence aided by the guidance of Mária Prokopp, Dániel Pócs, András Kovács, and Zsolt Kovács. These three events have fundamentally determined my later academic career. I would like to thank my colleagues Terézia Kemy, Ildikó Kontsek, Miklós Székely and Áron Tóth for their enthusiasm and great effort in the preparation of this volume of essays. I am grateful to the city council of Esztergom, which generously supported this work. Financial support has also come from the Hild-Ybl Foundation, the Studiolo Restoration and Artistic Society, and the Kieselbach Gallery & Auction House. I would like to express gratitude to those who helped revising the foreign-language abstracts: Előd Pál Csir- maz, Péter Schmidt, Renaud Vignat, and Michele Sita. Budapest, 2008 22
