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
initial appearance in 1946 was promising, mainly in terms of his approach: he addressed Renaissance art in Hungary from the viewpoint of classical studies, using the methods of international Renaissance research. He produced excellent writing, but left Hungary in 1956 and later published less and less, preferring to give lectures. The hegemony of Jolán Balogh's ideas started to be challenged only in the 1960s and 70s, with increasing frequency. Mihály Détshy 's source publications shook the established structure at several points. For example, he proved that the outer stairs of Sárospatak Castle were made not in the 16th but the mid- 17 th century, and that the loggia there belongs to the declining rather than the ascending phase of the style. Tibor Koppány 's researches into the all'antica buildings of Transdanubia and the organisation of their construction presented different kinds of details than might have been expected on the basis of Jolán Balogh's general principles. Rózsa Tóth Feuer changed established ideas from the approach of humanist art theory and the role of the humanists in King Matthias' espousal of art. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the situation had changed considerably, so that the Schallaburg Matthias exhibition codified a view of the Renaissance which in Hungary had already lost much of its validity or was at best obsolete. Immediately afterwards, then, during the 1980s, Hungarian art historiography's account of the Renaissance in Hungary very quickly went through spectacular changes. The last twenty-five years have been marked by pluralism of opinions and a flood of new data. The last part of the essay looks at the latest work on the single branch of art with the strongest tradition in Hungarian research — architecture and stonecarving. The main publications are of new archaeological finds and new archive data, among which András Kovács' monograph on Late Renaissance architecture (2003) stands out in particular. Alongside the new findings by art historians and researchers of historic monuments, a new line of research has been set by literary historians. Such is the publication of previously-unknown data by Ágnes Szalay Ritoók redating key pieces like John Hunyadi's tomb in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia) from the 1460s to 1533 and redrawing the intellectual background to certain groups of artists (collectors of classical Roman inscriptions in the Buda court). Historians nowadays are less positive about the Matthias Era, and the modern-era history of the Kingdom of Hungary is no longer seen purely as a ceaseless fight for independence waged by the Hungarian nation against the Ottomans and the Habsburgs. These changes, too, have taken an ever more powerful effect on art history.
