Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)

Péter Meller († 2008)

PÉTER MELLER (1923 BUDAPEST - 2008 SOLVANG. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) A great many of the young scholars who joined the Museum of Fine Arts

—mainly replacing staff who had left for various reasons

—during the years of World War II and the post-war years belonged to the generation born after W^orld War I. This was the last generation that had received an education still encompassing the entire history of European art from ancient times to the twentieth century, within which their interests and the tasks they performed steered them to a more specific area. Péter Melier was prominent among this fledgling group whose members embarked upon promising careers in the museum. He completed his university studies during the war years and among his subjects Greek and Latin philology was just as important as art history. The international circumstances following the war compelled young scholars at the beginning of their careers to change course and study domestic artefacts. Melier, who from the outset had principally been interested in the Renaissance, wrote his doctoral thesis in 1946 on the stone artefacts of the Visegrád Royal Palace, followed by works on the art from the period of King Matthias Corvinus. He initially arranged the documentation for the stone artefacts of the Hungarian Renaissance as part of the National Monuments Commission, and later worked at the University of Zurich for halfa year on a scholarship basis. Following this he won a scholarship that took him to Rome, where he became one of the most active organisers of the scientific events of the Flungarian Academy, all the while becoming ever closer to the theme that would captivate him for the rest of his life, the art of the Italian Renaissance, at this time mainly through studying Verrocchio and Neoplatonism in Florence. When because of the political situation the opportunities to work dried up at the Hungarian Academy in Rome, Meiler returned home at the end of 1948 and found a place at the Museum of Fine Arts as a volunteer, a position that lasted almost a year, until mid1949, when he became what was fashion-