Monday, February 25, 2013

Upcoming medieval conferences

Spring is often the season of conferences - and there are a number of them coming up in March, some dealing with aspects of medieval art in Hungary. So below, I am listing these, hoping to generate some additional interest in these forums.

Berlin, SMPK, Kupferstichkabinett


Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire: New Evidence, New Approaches (4th-6th centuries) - International Conference, Budapest - Pécs, March 7-10, 2013


The first conference to come up also deals with the earliest subject: the Early Christian period. Although only a few lectures deal with art historical topics, one of the locations of the conference the town of Pécs (which boasts an Early Christian necropolis) merits its inclusion here. Devoted to examining pagan-Christian interactions across the Roman Empire, the conference seeks to consider new evidence and new approaches to the material and textual remains that bear on the value of these categories between the fourth and the sixth centuries. The conference is organized by the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University, together with the University of Pécs and the Hungarian Patristic Society. Information on the conference is available on the CEU website.


Medieval Religious Architecture in Transylvania - 8th International Conference, Satu Mare, March 8-10, 2013

The conference series organized by the County Museum of Satu Mare and Jósa András Museum of Nyíregyháza has been one of the most important forums for questions of medieval architecture in Transylvania for many years. The conference presents a regular occassion for Hungarian and Romanian researchers to meet and discuss issues of their common heritage. Even more important is the fact the proceedings of these conferences are being published regularly: so far five volumes have been printed. The studies are published in various languages - often in English, and always with English-language summaries.
The program of the 8th conference can be seen here.



Grants of Arms and Patents of Nobility as Expressions of a European Cultural Transfer? International Conference, Opava (Troppau), March 13-15, 2013


This international interdisciplinary colloquium organised by the universities of Opava and Brno together with the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences aims to add the neglected point of view of diplomatics: which conclusions about the constitution of the “aristocracy”, its self-fashioning and its role within the politics of the European monarchs are offered by patents of nobility or acts of promotion to higher ranks of nobility? For the first time the concise cooperation of historian and art historians shall push the interdisciplinary approach towards grants of arms which, due to their illuminated coats of arms, may be considered as an important diplomatic innovation of the 14th and 15th centuries. A central question is how far – considering the profound differences between the European aristocratic elites – the progressive output of patents of nobility and grants of arms issued by European monarchs may be interpreted as a result of a European cultural transfer. The program of the conference is available here - you may notice that this is something I have to prepare for (as one of the presenters).

Other conferences worldwide

There are of course other events planned worldwide: The Index of Christian Art at Princeton is organizing a conference on Maps and Diagrams in Medieval Art (March 15-16, 2013). Also, on April 18-20, The International Colloquium “Medieval Europe in motion” will be held in Lisbon. You can find the conference website here and there is also a Facebook page for the event. The website also provides information on related research projects. And, to call attention to something later in the year: the second Forum Medieval Art (Forum Kunst des Mittelalters) is scheduled for September 2013 in Freiburg im Breisgau.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

In memoriam Melinda Tóth

Art historian Melinda Tóth passed away in January 2013, at the age of 74. Melinda Tóth spent a lifetime researching Hungarian Romanesque art and was one of the leading scholars of the field. She worked until her retirement at the Art History Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her research concentrated on two fields: Romanesque sculpture and Romanesque wall-painting, in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary. She was the author of the most recent monograph on wall-painting in Hungary in the Árpád-period (1974, a revision in the form of an article was published in 1995). In the field of Romaneque sculpture, she concentrated mainly on the study of Pécs cathedral. It was largely due to her efforts that the magnificient stone carvings from the medieval cathedral found a permament home in the new cathedral museum, which opened in 2004. Unfortunately, the catalogue of the carvings and the accompanying study on the cathedral sculptures was not finished until the death of Melinda Tóth. However, she published numerous studies on the subject in various journals and exhibition catalogues. I could not find a bibliography of her works online, but a query in Kubikat gives good results.

I had a chance to work together with Melinda Tóth at the mid-1990s, when she worked on the survey and cataloguing of the Pécs sculptures. This material was at the time kept at an abandoned movie building in a village in the hills above Pécs. The situation there was so appaling that even the World Monument Fund was alerted. Restoration of the pieces then began with their support. However, it took another ten years for the new museum to be built according to the plans of Zoltán Bachman.

Stone carvings from Pécs cathedral in storage, 1990s


Detail from the story of Samson; 12th c. relief from Pécs cathedral

My Hungarian-speaking readers can read a new study on Pécs cathedral written by Gergely Buzás, and made available online in memory of Melinda Tóth. I also wrote about Pécs cathedral in a previous post.