Mikó Árpád szerk.: "Magnificat anima mea Dominum" M S Mester vizitáció-képe és egykori selmecbányai főoltára (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1997/1)

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - VÉGH JÁNOS: A Selmecbányai Szent Katalin-templom szobrai a szakirodalom tükrében

JÁNOS VÉGH THE SCULPTURES OF THE ST CATHERINE CHURCH OF SELMECBÁNYA IN THE LITERATURE In the Gothic sculpture of Selmecbánya the three major works represent the Virgin and Child (222 cm), St. Catherine (199 cm) and St. Barbara (200 cm); the first is displayed on a console in the St. Catherine Church, while the other two are held in the Slovenské národné múzeum - Banské múzeum. The composition of the three sculptures is based on the contrast between the smooth, closed and exceedingly flat upper body and the extremely powerful drapery of the garment, unusually dynamic even by late Gothic standards. As befitting to the Queen of Heaven, Mary is covered in a mantle (although the sceptre and the crowns are later additions), with two little angels kneeling at her feet and holding the crescent. The upper half of the women's garment is more or less contemporary, although below the elevated waistline this aspect is lost in the wild flurry of the drapery. The virtuoso execution of the drapery was deliberate; the carving was bold, sometimes resulting features as thin as paper. This can explain some of the damages in the extremely delicate parts, such as the fracture underneath Barbara's right elbow. The regularity of the oval-shaped faces is striking, as if plasticity would have been forsaken in the interest of geometric design; the same is suggested by the strict regularity of the locks. Perhaps some disapproved of this regularity with regard to the sculpture of the Holy Mother, hence the superficial re-fashioning of her face. The setting of the eyes, along with the tiny dimples around the fingers and the chin - precisely the same parts that make this statue so alien and lonely in comparison with the two other sculptures - are features achieved by indention, therefore, it is pausible that they were made in order to liven up the original, thought to be a little too regular. (To confirm or to refute this assumption, of course, calls for a thorough physical examination.) The arms of the two secondary figures are missing, and they do not have any attributes. Nevertheless, they were traditionally known as Barbara and Catherine, which was confirmed on closer inspection. The breast of the former figure revealed the silhouette of a chalice (there must have been an Eucharist bread above it), which she held in her left hand, with her right hand resting on the tilt of a long sword. The way in which the other saint holds her arms, along with the entire composition, suggests that her remarkably long sword was similarly held in her raised right hand, the tilt of which left a mark - a short horizontal notch - on the trunk of her body, while her other arm, pointed downwards, held the other attribute, the incomplete wheel running parallel with the lining of the garment over the turbaned head. In the rest of the article, those major authors - more than two dozens of them - are discussed who wrote about the sculptures in the past 130 years. In summary, the following conclusion is reached: the three female figures most probably belonged to the same altar. The differences in the carving technique are not sufficiently marked to exclude this possibility, while in the case of the Madonna slight re-carving can be assumed. The altar, which could only have been the high altar on considerations of size, must have stood either in the Castle Church or in the St. Catherine Church: the latter alternative is made more probable by the presence of St. Catherine. Dating is a more delicate issue. It could hardly have been built around 1506, when the Castle Church's high altar was constructed. (The authors mentioned above emphasize this on several occasion, some of them even suggesting that the three sculptures came from this retable.) We do not know about any instance that a town in our area could have been able to finance the construction of two such large altarpieces at the same time. As to how much later it was constructed - unless urban history comes to our rescue -, we could only ascertain this by using the less-thanhundred-per-cent-reliable methods of stylistic criticism. In order to determine the stylistic origin of the sculptures, we will probably have to remember how similar are the strikingly regular features of the saints' faces and, even more to the point, their strictly geometrically curving plaits to the examples seen in the case of the high altar of Schwabach (Franconia). Furthermore, the point should also be borne in mind, what an obvious archetype the same altar - one of the most important works of the early-sixteenth-century Nuremberg masters who came to play such an important role in the art of Late-Mediaeval Hungary - could have been, with its powerful use of the contrast between