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In 1913 László Éber wrote a paper about the rood screen of the baroque cathedral of Vác. He was the first who revealed that sixteen pieces from the renaissance-style carved stone elements of the rood screen were made in the late medieval period. the stone material of the pieces is marl of the Buda region. there were other stone carvings masoned in the cathedral: four dividing pillars of this balustrade, other two with Jagellonian signs from red marble and two tables with the coat of arms of Miklós Báthori (bishop of Vác, 1474–1506). The balustrade elements can be seen in the baroque cathedral thought to be in strong connections with some dividing pillars from Buda castle. there were two ideas about the dating of the Vác balustrade: either they were made during the reign of King Matthias corvinus or after his death during the Jagellonian era. In 1992 árpád Mikó discovered a barrel on the backside of one pillar, which is one of the emblems of King Matthias. there is another important question: what was the original finding place of the pillars? Éber wrote, that it is plausible that Miklós Báthori was the order of the balustrade and it was stood in the medieval cathedral of Vác, which was destroyed during the Ottoman era. is it possible that they came from the site, which now laid under and around the baroque Franciscan church and monastery in Vác? I examined the written sources from the 18–19th centuries and it turned out, that there is no information about it.

On the other hand, there are several other renaissance fragments from Vác, most of them were also made of marl of the Buda region. the fragments kept by the local museum came into light by archaeological excavations between 1912 and 2019, on the site where the medieval episcopate laid. From the first time, researchers (based on Éber) wrote that the findings stand close to the ones in the cathedral’s rood screen. Most of them are well known – we could say – because tibor Koppány published every known piece in 1994. He wrote about a few other balustrade fragments too, but his descriptions are very short, and we can see drawings of only ca. one-third of all pieces. so i decided to see the original fragments and found that those small pieces kept by the museum don’t come from that balustrade can be seen today in the cathedral.

The most important difference is the shaping of the baluster’s foot rings. they are divided: there is a vertical section and after that, the ring widens into a curved form. Furthermore, the image field of the dividing pillars framed in a more complex mode. On the image fields probably tapes, garlands, trophies were carved, but there is not any intact one, only very small pieces, which came to light in every corner of the site. so the balustrade’s original place couldn’t be determined certainly. nevertheless, because of the fine surfaces of the carvings, i think the balustrade stood inside, maybe in the medieval cathedral, perhaps in the chapel of saint nicolaus where Miklós Báthori was buried.

Among the early renaissance-style pieces known from the medieval Hungarian Kingdom, there are a few analogies. First of all, we can see the very same solution on the foot rings of the Jagellonian era dividing pillars from Hungarian red marble in Vác. they belong to a group of red marble carvings: the other elements of this group can be found in Buda and esztergom. Furthermore, from the marl of the Buda region stone material i know only one other example where the baluster foot rings are similar: the gallery of the castle chapel in siklós. so i think we can say certainly that the „new” balustrade fragments from Vác were made during the Jagellonian era.

Traditonal Stone Techniques - Stone Culture - Research on stone work and its products is sharply divided into the ethnological approach, into archaic techniques and the archaeological and art historical study of the products. In this study the author draws attention to the common features of the problem, drawing most of his examples from villages in the southern foothills of the Bükk Mountains. He points out that in this region of volcanic tuff, stone quarrying and stone carving were among the basic skills that could be put to good use. Most of the work, even work requiring considerable skill, on the construction and stone carving projects of the late 18th century in the Baroque town of Eger (Heves County, Northern Hungary) was done by peasant stone carvers of the region under the direction of specialists. The author also draws attention to the difficulties of dating structures carved in rock and stone carvings.

Among the ruins of the medieval Benedictine monastery of Kács an inscribed tombstone was found in 1882. Together with other stone carvings, it went into canon of Eger Gyula Bartalos’s possession, then from his estate into the lapidary of the Liceum of Eger, and finally to the Castle Museum of Eger.

The paper presents the conception and art historical conclusions of the exhibition entitled Knowledge in Plaster Casts. The former cast collection of the Budapest Metropolitan Industrial Drawing School (1886–1945) held in FUGA Budapest Center of Architecture on 4–25 October 2017.

The three groups of exhibits comprised original 19–20^th century plaster casts, 18–19^th century drawings from casts, and reproduced photos from the catalogue of the casting workshop of the Hungarian National Royal Higher School of Architecture dated 1904. As the price list illustrations revealed, late 19^th–early 20^th century cast collections for the purpose of education were visual encyclopaedias of the educational and cultural ideals of the age. Thematically, the replicas of pattern and sculpture conveyed a broad scale of mythological knowledge, culture historical information via notable figures of literature and history, as well as botanic, anatomical and geometric knowledge. The compilation of a cast collection required broad historical, culture historical and professional expertise, and the casting workshops and the cast catalogues they published mediated this common knowledge.

The exhibition and the preceding elaboration of the collection provided further art historical conclusions, of which the paper embarks on the relationship between original and copy apropos a plaster paraphrase of a 12^th century stone carving from Saint Denis.

Abstract

The provenance of several stone carvings thought to have belonged among the renaissance carved stones of King Matthias Corvinus' Buda palace is uncertain. A huge gable field with a coat of arms and a monumental inscribed tablet came to the collection of the Hungarian National Museum in 1874. Earlier, they adorned the old building of the University Library — the convent of the Franciscans of Pest — but it has not been clarified yet how they had got there. This time, sources have been found about their transfer into the National Museum. They were involved in an exchange: for the carved stones (some Roman ones as well in addition to the renaissance stones) that were extracted when the old library building was pulled down, the University Library received the second copy of Chronica Hungarorum (Buda, Andreas Hess, 1473), the first book printed in Hungary preserved in the National Széchényi Library. This copy of the Chronicle has permanently been in Hungary and eventually got into the National Museum and the Library together with the collection of Miklós Jankovich, the great art collector. It was part of a colligatum containing Caius Julius Caesar's De bello Gallico, which — to a superficial observer — might also have been taken for a product of the Hess printing office. From the colligatum (adorned with a late medieval Hungarian book cover) the Hess incunabulum was removed and given to the University Library together with another four old books printed in Hungary.

Summary

In this survey of the most important exhibitions of art historical interest the following exhibitions and (if published, also with the indication of their texts or summaries in an other language then Hungarian) their catalogues are reviewed. History and its Images, the Relationships between Past and Art in Hungary – Hungarian National Gallery/Budapest Images of Hungarian History – Historical Gallery of the Hungarian National Museum/Budapest Medieval History in the Mirror of Seals. Medieval Seals of Esztergom – Cathedral Treasury/Esztergom Cult and Relics of Hungarian Saints – Christian Museum/Esztergom The Center of Europe around 1000 (an international exhibition) – Hungarian National Museum/Budapest „Basilica grandis et famosa‘ The Provostry Church of the Holy Virgin (stone carvings of the medieval royal Provostry of Székesfehárvár) – Museum of King St. Stephan/Székesfehárvár Three Codexes (the Csatár-Admont Bible, the Hungarian Angevin Legendary and the Psalter of Bishop Urban Nagylucsei) – Széchényi National Library/Budapest The Centuries of the Royal Palace in Buda – Historical Museum of Budapest/Budapest The House of the Nation, Parliament Plans for Buda-Pest, 1784–1884 – Museum of Fine Arts/Budapest Guardians of Hungay's Heritage. József Könyöky's and Viktor Myskovszky's evaluations of historic monuments (late 19th century) – National Office for Historical Monuments/Budapest Treasures of the Applied Arts in Hungary – An hommage to the donors – Museum of Applied Arts/Budapest Intuition, Innovation, Invention. Scientific and technical discoveries, artistic innovations from Hungary – Exhibitions Hall/Budapest Images of Time – Museum of Ethnography/ Budapest

Abstract

This study deals with the history of the carved stone monuments of the royal provostry church founded by St. Stephen in honour of the Virgin Mary in the early 11th century and destroyed in the time following the Ottoman occupation of the city. The epochs of the research (at least of the reception of the stone monuments) are distinguished in the study as follows: 18. century: the period of the final destruction of few remnants of the church, and the beginning of the first interest for stone (mainly for Roman) monuments. In the Bishop's Garden a collection of carved stones containing besides Roman Antiquities also medieval pieces is formed. The first arcgaeological research on the territory of the ruins was made in 1848, as the graves of King Béla III. and of his Queen could be uncovered in an authentic way. In the second half of the 19th century the monuments of Székesfehérvár were studied as witnesses of national splendour. Imre Henszlmann conducts three excavation campaignes in 1864, 1874 and 1872 with different impacts for his publications. In the first of these he published mainly well known pieces with a few additions of his own findings while in his later books he seems to have been interested mostly by other historic topics and not mentioning important stone findings. In earlier time mainly stones carvings in secondary use could be collected, and now important pieces found in situ came mainly on the Bishop's Palace. This collection represented the Székesfehérvár Church at the Millennary exhibition in 1896. On the basis of the idetification made by using written sources and also visual evidence a group of about 27 pieces with vegetal ornamentation, vhich can be dated certainly on the 12th century, can be probably localized on the eastern part of the medieval church and considered hipotetically as belonging to the early rood screen of the second building period.

The Benedictine abbey of Kács dedicated to St Peter was – as historical and archaeological sources suggest – in place of and around the current parish church on top of the hill in the northern part of the village, once the central lands of the Örsúr clan in the 12–13^th century. The founders and advowees of the monastery were probably members of the Örsúr clan, who also built a castle on the edge of the village and in nearby Sály. The more exact foundation date of the Benedictine abbey is unknown. Its first mention „monasterium de Kach” is in a diploma of 1248 summarizing the royal land grants to the bishop of Eger. Its title and religious order –„abbas monasterii Sancti Petri de Kach de ordine Sancti Benedicti” – are known from a source of 1292. After 1347 the monastery came to be possessed by a branch of clan named after Tibold and living in nearby Darócz. After the mid-14th century, practically contemporaneously with the breaking up of the clan into branches and the local segmentation of the clan estates, as well as the impoverishment of the monastery, the abbey seems to disappear from the sources. Its demolition in 1549 was before the appearance of the Ottomans around Eger. In place of the ruins a single-nave baroque church was built in the 1720s, which became the parish church of the re-peopled village in the 18th century. In 1882 the western part of the church was enlarged and a tower built in revival romanesque style. The remains were first taken note of in the 1860s by Arnold Ipolyi (1823–1886), the canon of Eger and a researcher of architectural relics of the Árpád Age around Eger. He thought to have found remains of the medieval monastic church in the small baroque church with semi-circular apse. He described several ornamental romanesque stone carvings made from “red stone” (andesite tuff) on the site. Further medieval carvings were found during the extension of the church on the west in 1882, which went to canon Gyula Bartalos’s (1839–1923) collection. Later he gave away these fragments and thus founded the Lapidary of the archiepiscopal Liceum of Eger. In the 1960s excavations were carried on around the parish church of Kács; its archeologist (Károly Kozák) presumed (on the basis of a much-disputed theory) that the floor-plan of the singlenave church with the rounded apse suggests 11th century origin. At the same time, along the south side of the church a narrower nave section terminated also by a semi-circular apse was unearthed, which might rather suggest a 12–13th century three-aisle layout. To the south of this remain, vestiges of a north-south oriented wing were recovered, which can be identified with the Benedictine monastery building with great probability. The paper reviews the romanesque stone carvings found in Kács (which are partly in museums, partly on the spot and some regrettably lost since the 1960s), our art historical knowledge and collection historical data about them.

The group of romanesque carved stone relics display stylistic homogeneity. More exact dating within the 12–13^th century is hindered by the fragmentary nature and provincial features of the group. Local analogies of the stylistic features, motifs, moulding shapes can be discerned, among other places, in Szomolya, Boldva, Tarnaszentmária and the local stratum of the workshop of Eger cathedral around 1200. On these bases, the studied ensemble is datable to the last third of the 12^th century or the beginning of the 13^th. The romanesque fragments of Kács inform us of the cultural level and possibilities of a clan who were mainly locally important even in their heyday in the 12–13^th centuries as the modest building of their small Benedictine monastery reveals. That is what lends it its significance, too, for in the regional context it is a little known architectural relic of a well-delimited area hallmarked by extant relics of the Árpád Age such as Feldebrő and Tarnaszentmária, the remains of the Benedictine abbey at Boldva and the Cistercian abbey at Bélapátfalva, or the one-time „chef de’oeuvre” of the 12^th century, the cathedral of Eger in the centre of the region, rebuilt around 1200.

Antal Verancsics (1504-1573) was born in Sebenico (Šibenik) to a noble family and he got to Hungary through family relations: his uncle János Statileo (Statilić) was bishop of Gyulafehérvár. His political career started in the court of King John I (Szapolyai). In 1541 he followed the widow of the king, Izabella Jagiello to Transylvania and only changed over to the other king of Hungary, Ferdinand I’s court in 1549 where he filled high administrative positions. As a Habsburg envoy, he sojourned in the Ottoman Empire on two occasions and in 1568 he concluded the Treaty of Adrianople (Hadrianopolis, Edirne). On the zenith of his ecclesiastic career he became archbishop of Esztergom (1569) and eventually cardinal (1573). He went into historiography, too: he wrote some works and a considerable number of sources he collected survive. In his youth he wrote poems in Latin and Italian and was on good terms with painters and sculptors. Martino Rota, also born in Sebenico, was invited to Hungary by him. Several data confirm that he had a keen interest in portraits (he wrote an epigram on Dürer’s Melanchthon portrait); he ordered portraits of himself from Melchior Lorch, Martino Rota and Antonio Abondio. He organized that a Crakow painter should paint the portrait of John Sigismund elected King of Hungary, and his correspondence with his siblings about having a portrait of his father painted is known. Back from his first mission in Turkey, in 1558 he wrote an epigram on an enigmatic woodcut composition of a multitude of elements tailored to Sultan Suleyman I, and dedicated the emblem to Maximilian, crowned king of Bohemia and heir apparent to the Hungarian throne. This composition is included in the second edition of Johannes Sambucus’ Emblemata. Some tomes of his library featured – in line with the fashion of the age – supralibros, and as bishop of Eger, he had an ornate parchment codex, a Praefationale made (1563). The rather mediocre quality initials of the manuscript echo the humanist cult of letters which produced the most beautiful achievements of artistic calligraphy in the middle of the century. In one initial Verancsics himself appears, his tiny figure kneeling before Christ’s cross (fol. 42r). Verancsics was interested in the material relics of antiquity, too: in Transylvania he collected stone carvings, coins and Roman inscriptions. As bishop of Eger he perpetuated the restoration of the castle in a monumental inscription. Also attracted to sepulchral monuments, he had the tomb of one of his predecessors in the diocese damaged in the siege of 1552 restored. He wished to have his funerary monument in the St Nicholas church in Nagyszombat, one like his predecessor in the episcopacy of Esztergom Miklós Oláh had, with a portrait statue. It was eventually not made. Finally, an overview of the sources that can provide clues as to the artistic interests of Antal Verancsics reveals that most of the sources are in the – unpublished – collection of letter and the book of poems he compiled. His intellectual self-portrait also includes his attraction to the arts.