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This paper explores the iconography of two prints owned by Haydn, the traditions to which they belonged and their aesthetic consequences. The prints depict two contrasting audiences, one amused and the other despondent, and feature a range of iconographic references that Haydn would have readily responded to, including such themes as the death of Dido, the world of Tristram Shandy, the madness of Orlando and Don Quixote, the humorous verse of Peter Pindar (one of Haydn’s librettists) and inevitably (in prints of this kind) contemporary English politics. A particular point of interest is a caricature of Edward Topham, an amateur caricaturist and founding editor of the influential newspaper The World , featured in one of the prints. In a series of issues in the late 1780s The World published a ‘correspondence’ with Haydn himself, which sought to undermine the composer’s suitability for composing with London audiences’ in mind. The print may have helped serve to remind Haydn of this dispute at the time he actually began composing in London and to aid him in keeping such audiences in mind when composing for them.
This paper examines a painting by the prominent Biedermeier painter Josef Danhauser, Liszt at the Piano, a unique visual document of the Romantic generation’s cultic relationship and collective memory surrounding the virtually holy predecessor, Beethoven. It demonstrates the Beethoven reverence of (1) the commissioner Conrad Graf, a piano maker, who gave an instrument to Beethoven, (2) the painter Danhauser, who took the death mask of the German composer, and (3) Liszt, who considered himself the artistic heir to Beethoven. Although it is a well-known and thoroughly researched painting, its re-examination is still worthwhile. Focusing on aspects of cultural history, the contemporary reception of the painting should be reconsidered from a synthesizing point of view utilizing the results of art historical iconography and musicology. As a kind of cultural study, the paper attempts to demonstrate the background and motives that lead to the creation of the painting. I shall place the painting in the wider context of the history of ideas which is represented by the art-religious experience Liszt and his Paris companions gained from Beethoven’s music. An evaluation of the narrower, historical background — the Beethoven cult triggered by the piano concerts given by Liszt in Vienna in 1839–1840 — will also be discussed.
.: The history and iconography of Cesarean section. [A császármetszés története és ikonográfiája.] Historia et iconographia sectionis caesareae. Folium, Budapest, 1996, 59. [Hungarian] Szabó A
1844 Szabó, A.: The history and iconography of caesarean section. [A császármetszés története és ikonográfiája.] Folium, Budapest, 1996
Meister und Werkstätten. Ausbau und Einrichtung der Benediktinerabtei in Tihany im 18. Jahrhundert
Masters and Workshops. The construction and the furnishing of the Benedictine Abbey of Tihany in the 18th Century
Abstract
The Benedictine Monastery of Tihany (founded in 1055 by King Andrew I of Hungary) was in its actual form in two periods (1720–1736 and 1744–1754 respectively) according to two different plans constructed. Contrary to earlier attributions to the Carmelite architect Martin Wittwer the plans were probably made by two master builders of Pest-Buda, Johann Hölbling and Johann Georg Paur. The furnishing (altars, pulpit and organ) lasted from the mid 1750ies to the end of the 1770s. Its iconography reflects the different concepts of two abbots, Ágoston Lécs and Sámuel Vajda. Until now the sculptor of the monastery, Sebastian Stolhoff was considered as the unique author of the whole furniture. Archive studies and observation in the course of restorations have proved, that the furniture was made in the joiners’ workshop of the monastery supervised by Sebastian Stolhoff, a familiar of Tihany Abbey. The workshop has mainly to help the construction of the altars, and the plans as well as the wood sculptures were made by sculptors from the town Pápa (Leopold and Josef Huber) with the exception of the main altar, a work by Ferenc József Schmidt, a sculptor of Veszprém. The gilding and painting of the statues, which according to the guilds’ practice was separated from the sculptural work, was also made by urban masters, mainly Mihály János Stern of Pápa and József Codell of Szé kes fe hér-vár. The geographic circle of the activities of the sculptors and painters working in Tihany can be determined as corresponding to the middle part of Transdanuby.
The text deals with the work of Jana Želibská (1941 Olomouc) — flanêuse in the 1960s and the priestess of the Great Mother (Nature) in the 1970s. Želibská took a central position among male protagonists of neo-avant-garde in Slovakia. Her approach has been labeled ‘latent feminism’ because no real feminist platform existed during socialism in Slovakia. Želibská used the language of pop art and New Realism and their iconography mixed with the local folklore motifs in a quite different way. Pop art and New Realism entered the oeuvre of many artists simultaneously with experiments in conceptual art (Stano Filko, Peter Bartoš, Július Koller, Jana Želibská). After 1968, Želibská shifted the focus of her activities to land as an open structure outside of official supervision. Želibská made several statements regarding experiencing the magic of the present moment and experience with landscape through concepts and events that emphasized connection with nature. Photography helped her to work with continuity and causality in photo-sequences of situations and events. The path through ‘rooms of her own’ and other spatial concepts from the female labyrinth to the architecture of the temple in the 1960s, through changing open structures outdoors in her concept and land art in the 1970s, photography in 1980s, reached installation and video in the 1990s. Installations in the 1980s were built mainly on the artist’s experience with and in nature, or on the typical postmodernist contrast of the urban and natural. Puberty and virginity, which interested her in the land art events in 1970s, appeared again in her video art in a monumental demonstration of ‘girl power.’ In 1997 Želibská took the position behind the camera, shooting a naked male body without identity and face in the video installation Her View of Him. Thus she completed her shift from the ‘girl power’ of the 1960s and early 1970s agenda to fully articulated ‘woman power’.
The paper bellow aims at presenting and discussing Father Pavel Florensky's Sophiology on the basis of his theodicy concentrated in his doctorial dissertation published in 1914 which contains scrupulously detailed argumentations. Summarising his views concerning a positive approach to the utmost essential function and mission of philosophy, i.e. revealing the Higher Truth, Florensky points out his belief that it unquestionably belongs to the sphere of the Transcendent. Truth, which thus is knowledgeable exclusively via scrutinising the nature of the Holy Spirit (here Florensky intensely disputes Kantian agnosticism), is consequently to be observed as the indivisible single whole. The author attempts to systematise the ancient tradition of Sophia, which has been existent in a latent fashion in Russian mentality, by throwing some light upon both its roots to be traced back in the Old Testament and in patristics, and in Russian iconography. Florensky's work, whose unique impact on turn-of-the-century Russian Symbolist circles (Belyj and Blok) is not to be ignored, offers an insight into the theoretical background of Russian Sophiology. Following in the footsteps of Vl. Solovyev and referring to the Fathers of Church, Florensky considers it completely feasible to link Sophiology to living Christian theology and practice, offering denials against accusations of heresy. Utilising abundant interdisciplinary methods in his argumentation Florensky emphasises strife upon behalf of the self oriented towards the principle of self-perfection-a main trend also prophesied by his contemporary N. Berdjaev. Concepts of memory, dichotomies of darkness and light are given detailed discussion, from which, in harmony with Florensky's teachings, follows the transition from the empirical state of time and space to the higher realm of the Absolute. In this process dualism may be conquered by the interfering principle of the Holy Sophia (this interpretation modifies scanty clues found in Solovyev's oeuvre), who represents the principle of Unification. A novel differentiation provides distinction between Western Philosophy and Russian Sophiology by marking the historically corrupt Sophia in the former.
Kódextöredékek Pauer János székesfehérvári püspök inkunábulumaiban
Codex fragments in the incunabula of bishop of Székesfehérvár, János Pauer
Abstract
In the late 19th century a few Quattrocento initials and border ornaments were glued into the incunabula of the Pauer collection in the Episcopal Library of Székesfehérvár. The pictures are by Venetian illuminators painted for liturgical choir books. Bishop of Székesfehérvár János Pauer collected incunabula between 1879 and 1886 and probably obtained five complete large manuscript folios at that time as well. The parchment sheets were probably cut up by printer Kálmán Számmer upon the bishop's commission. Számmer completed the missing initials with hand painting, coloured the printed initials and sometimes composed colourful letters or a whole ornate title-page around a 15th century manuscript fragment stuck into the incunabulum. Among the fragments the most significant pieces are Cristoforo Cortese's signed initial showing St Francis enthroned surrounded by the host of angels and another Cortese fragment of two Franciscan monks. Similarly to the initial showing St Francis' death in the Wildenstein collection (Paris, Musée Marmottan), the illumination was presumably made after 1426, following Cortese's move to Bologna. The closest analogy of the Székesfehérvár composition is a Maiestas domini miniature painted by the “master of 1346” of Bologna. Originally, the codex from which the folio illuminated by Cortese comes was possibly made for a Franciscan community in Bologna, perhaps the Santi Ludovico e Alessio Convent of St Clare nuns ransacked by Napoleon's troops in 1798. The depiction of St Francis surrounded by adoring angels is remarkable for its iconography because it is a so-far unknown variant of the Franciscus alter Christus idea. The illuminator of the other four large initials showing half-length figures of prophets in Székesfehérvár is a later follower of the Master of San Michele a Murano. So far research has linked up three works by this master; the Székesfehérvár pictures show very close kinship with two initials dated to 1470 (New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, and private collection, resp.).
A győri “Istenszülő az Életadó forrás”-ikon: egy magyarországi posztbizánci emlék ikonográfiájához
Győr Icon of the Mother of God “The Life-Giving Spring”. To the iconography of a post-Byzantine relic in Hungary
Abstract
The paper looks – mainly from the point of view of iconography – at the intricate composition of the icon of The Mother of God “The Life-giving Fountain” made around 1700 and once used in the former Serbian orthodox church of Győr. Despite the Greek title of the icon calling the Mother of God the Life-giving Fountain, it only partly fits into the tradition of this Byzantine icon type that evolved in the Palaeologan age. The relic is astonishingly innovative not only in the Hungarian stock of icons but also in the whole of post-Byzantine icon painting first of all on account of its secondary motifs. The analysis of analogies and pictorial sources of the individual compositional elements – various plant motifs, the fountain, the coronation of the Virgin, motifs alluding to the celestial sphere – has revealed that the Győr icon is an elaborate complex of western influences arriving into post-Byzantine art along diverse routes. The inscriptions also tie the icon to the Byzantine Akathist hymn to the Blessed Virgin which includes the same symbols of Mary rooted in the Bible as were widespread in the West as well in the early baroque cult of the Virgin. The Győr icon has connections with post-Byzantine iconographic types displaying the influence of western art, such as the tree of Jesse, the Unfading rose, which together with the Life-giving Fountain icon were popular in the 16–17th century icon painting in the territory between Venice, Crete and Athos. The special art historical place of the studied icon is, however, defined by its closest iconographic analogy, the Sammelikone surviving in the imperial court of Vienna, in which the central image of the Life-giving Fountain is added the votive portraits of Emperor Leopold I and his wife. The Győr icon of the Life-giving Fountain is most probably related to some orthodox ethnic group (Serbs, Greeks, Macedonians) who fled the Ottomans to the area of the Habsburg Empire.
Le Mandylion de Lukov dans l'iconographie des icones de la région carpatique aux 15e 16esiecles
Le mandylion dans la region des Carpates
Summary
In the 15thcentury, an Orthodox diocese came into being in the north-eastern corner of the Hungarian Kingdom. The centre of the diocese was the town of Munkács. As Munkács is located in the crossroads of cultures and nations, the artifacts produced in the diocese all reflect a vivid connection between northern and southern, eastern and western civilizations. The Mandylion, more typical as a mural in Byzantine art, is one of the most important subjects of icon paintings produced in the 15th–16thcenturies. In this icon the portrait of Jesus on the shawl is complemented with erect figures of archangels. In the Deisis version the angels follow the shawl with awe and worship. The notion of showing up the relic appears in several versions. The angels are either in the background, raising the holy shawl, or show it up with a ceremonial gesture. The versions show the influence of the northern Russian iconography on the one hand, and the effects of late Gothic style on the other. These influences show the changing attitudes of the artists. The Mandylion of Lukov, surviving in the Diocese of Munkács (Mucatchevo) is preserved today in the Slovakian National Gallery in Bratislava. It is one of the rare examples where the central picture is complete with side scenes, depicting an oriental version of the Acheiropoeitos-legend. There are two similar surviving icons, which appear to follow the traditions of icon painting in Moldova. The Mandylion appears as a part of the visual system of the iconostasion of the Carpathians, in the central axis of the Celebration, or as a supraport of the Royal Gate. The ancient Apotropeion-type picture, surrounded with scenes depicting the sacrifice of the Apostles, receives an Eucharistic meaning. In this way it is close to the meaning and function of the western depictions of Veronica's shawl.
