Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)

Kerepesi út Cemetery at the Turn of the 20th Century

■ Oszkár Fritz and Gyula Betlen: the vault of the Tóth family

by Oszkár Fritz, while the statues were sculpted by Gyula Betlen. Of the four allegories — a woman in mourning, a dead body under a pallet, and two dou- bled-up nudes — it is only the male nude whose face is visible. Representing a high standard of artistic quality in its entirety and its every detail, the assemblage was one of the first funeral monuments in the arcades, which had not yet been formally opened at the time.

Also in the right-hand side arcades are the family tombs of the Eisele and the Kilián families, monuments made by Miklós Ligeti in 1913 and 1915, respectively. Besides the person of the artist, the two sepulchres are united by their uniform style and iconography. Both are based on the classic element of European funereal art, the motif of the gate, which, marking the boundary of our earthly life and the hereafter, is one of the most ancient death symbols. Different in shape as they are, the two gates thus echo one another as do the two complementary sculptures placed before them: Ligeti represented here

31