Mikó Árpád – Verő Mária - Jávor Anna szerk.: Mátyás király öröksége, Késő reneszánsz művészet Magyarországon (16–17. század) 2. kötet (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/4)
The English Summary of Volumes I—II
GÉZA GALAVICS PAINTERS AND THEIR USE OF ENGRAVINGS IN LATE RENAISSANCE HUNGARY The "Hungarian Late Renaissance" category is one of the most flexible concepts in Hungarian art historiography. There is more or less a consensus as to its beginnings — the mid- 16 th century, as in the rest of Central Europe — but less so as to the duration of its later period. Late Renaissance art coexisted with the early Baroque for an extended period in the 17 th century throughout Central Europe, including Hungary. Indeed in many cases it is not possible to precisely determine the criteria for classifying some sets of works into one style or the other, or to draw the boundaries of the Late Renaissance. This problem is similar for all Central European countries and areas, and Hungarian art historians have addressed it several times. Three and a half decades ago I was commissioned to investigate the coexistence of Late Renaissance and Early Baroque art in Hungary in the first half of the 17 century. One of the main issues was periodization. I sought artistic phenomena in which a new-style work appeared together with a new demand on the part of a patron, and with the resulting artistic activity. In Hungarian Baroque art, the first building which I found to be sharply distinguished from its contemporaries was the Jesuit Church in Nagyszombat (Trnava). I put the beginnings of Hungarian Baroque to around the 1630s. This is set out in the Baroque chapters of a one-volume (1983) and a two-volume (2001) survey of art history. This starting date seems to have been widely accepted. The date links the appearance of the Baroque with the strengthening of the Catholic reform movement, the increasing re-Catholicization of the Hungarian aristocracy and the search for a settlement between the Hungarian nobles and the Habsburgs. A further publication by the present author in 1973 attempted to identify new research areas. Many of these problems have now been resolved, but some issues — Protestant epitaphs, Evangelical and some Catholic altars and painted church interiors — on which the narrative message is conveyed by painted images. These were all produced at about the same time, even though their compositions are in very different styles. It was Jozef Medvecky who found the key, by involving reproduction graphics, an area whose importance I had already pointed out. He explored the circulation of reproduction graphics works published in Europe. This paper returns to the subject to present and comment on his research results, and occasionally to set them in a new context. It also seeks to continue the research dialogue on work he started by presenting new observations and results. Medvecky produced a 240-sheet graphics catalogue of engravings used as the basis of 17 th-18 th century works of art found on the territory of modern Slovakia, or made or taken there. In Hungary, research into engraving precursors has chiefly been important in the study of medieval panel painting. The key publications are by Edith Hoffmann (1937), who demonstrated the use of engravings by Master ES, Schongauer, Dürer, Altdorfer, Schäuffelein, S. Beham, Veit Stoss, Israel van Meckenem and others in the compositions of 99 panel paintings in Hungary and 63 in Transylvania (in addition to many codex miniatures in Hungary). Research has also discovered the use of engravings as the basis for art in historical Hungary. For example, Klára Garas (1953) drew attention to Ghirlandaio's composition of Santa Maria Novella in Florence in the murals of the wooden church in Oravka (Orawka, Poland, 1655). Mária Aggházy (1956) discovered the influence of an engraving in the style of Hans von Aachen in an epitaph in Lőcse (Levoca). The present author, in 1976, demonstrated the use of Antonio Tempesta's battle-scene engravings in the grand hall of Ferenc Nádasdy 's castle in Sárvár (1653), and in 1993, that a side-altar of the Jesuit Church in Győr features an altarpiece composition by Laurent de la Hyre. Jozef Medvecky was carrying on a line or research into the art of old Hungary which Edith Hoffmann had started in her study of medieval panel paintings. Medvecky studied two groups. One involves art from the area of modern Central and East Slovakia (Szepesség [Spis], the mining towns, Kassa [Kosice], Eperjes [Presov], the Bártfa area, Gömör and Nógrád), and the other painted decorations in the Pálffy castle at Vöröskő (Cerveny Kamen), specifically in the residential rooms on the main floor, the chapel and the Sala terrena, the work of Carpoforo Tencala and associates. The oldest and most frequent use of engravings as the basis of art in the Szepes area and the mining towns in the 17 th century involved Bible illustrations (or biblical pictures in their own right). The source of the composition for one early epitaph may well have been selected by its patron. It was erected in June 1600 by a noble of Árva county (Nowy Sacz), Job Zmeskal, in memory of his wife, Petronella Gelethfy (V-24). Medvecky identified with the woodcut title page of a Czechlanguage Protestant Bible, the "Králic Bible" published in 1594 (figures 9 and 10). He did not address the motivation for selecting this image. The Králic Bible had the same significance for Protestants who practised their faith in the Czech language as the Károli Bible had for Hungarian Protestants. The painter, Jakob Khien, could have drawn on a wide range of German and Netherlandish Bibles as precursors. The title page of the Králic Bible was the personal choice of the patron, expressing
