Reconsecration of Pannonhalma Abbey Church

The medieval church of the Archabbey of Pannonhalma was restored over the last few months, and was solemnly reconsecrated today. The interior reconstruction of the 13th-century abbey church was carried out according to the plans of British architect, John Pawson. The reconstruction mainly focused on the main liturgical area of the church, the chancel and the monastic choir. The main goal of the alterations was to restore the simplicity of this space, and this meant the removal of the 19th century historicising decoration designed by Ferenc Storno (Storno similarly removed the earlier Baroque furnishing of the basilica, to make way for his own, 'historically correct' decorations - now his work suffered a similar fate). The Storno-reconstruction, which was completed in 1876, was the last major intervention inside the church. Storno's pulpit was moved to a chapel at Pannonhalma, while the 19th century stained glass windows - including the large rose window depicting the patron of the church, St. Martin - have been deposited at the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. On the other hand, the painted glass panes of the side aisle remained there, and the vault frescoes of Storno were cleaned.

The ideas of Pawson are summarized in the following statement he made:  ‘The goal of the architectural scheme made for the reconstruction of the Basilica of the Archabbey of Pannonhalma is to develop a space suitable for harmonic reception of the community of monks and their liturgy, meeting the needs of the local community and visitors. This goal was achieved by getting rid of several makeshift elements appearing in the use of space, and the character of “storage of historic furniture” was also eliminated. The purpose of the interventions was a uniform space in the church where each part and element of space has its own role and significance, and functionally and visually contributes to the development of the space designed for prayer and meditation, which are considered the basic function of the place. The plan attempts to redefine the space of the church structured axially, ascending within its section, orienting towards the sanctuary, and finally to the rose window in order to emphasize the meaning of the space: the way of Christians. On the one hand, the key is a complex and deliberate process of catharsis; on the other hand it is a careful equilibration of the existing historic layers.’

Pawson's scheme for the reconstruction (source: johnpawson.com)

The monks of Pannonhalma took notice of Pawson when he built the Cistercian abbey church of Novy Dvur in Bohemia, and he received the commission along with a Hungarian architectural studio. Along with the reconstruction of the church, this year also marks the completion of the rebuilding and expansion of visitor service areas at Pannonhalma. in 2010 a new visitors’ center was opened on the hilltop near the abbey. In 2011, a new entrance for visitors was opened on the bastion on top of the hill of the abbey.

The Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma is one of the oldest historical monuments in Hungary, founded in 996. It is a World Heritage site. The present church of Pannonhalma was built in early Gothic style at the beginning of the 13th century during the reign of Abbot Uros, and was consecrated most likely in 1224.

You can read more about the reconstruction on the website of the Hungarian Presidency of the EU.

Photo showing the removal of the 19th century stained glass windows from the eastern wall of the church

New books on art in medieval Hungary

I've recently written brief reviews of several English or German language books about the art of medieval Hungary - including the conference volume published by Villa I Tatti on Italy and Hungary in the Early Renaissance or Evelin Wetter's book on late medieval goldsmith works from Hungary. I am happy to report that two new books in English have been published on the subject - both will be treated in more detailed reviews later on. For now, I would just like to inform my readers about these important contributions, both by young researchers, to the study of medieval art in Central Europe.

The first book is part of the »Studia Jagellonica Lipsiensia« series: Emese Sarkadi Nagy: Local Workshops - Foreign Connections. Late Medieval Altarpieces from Transylvania. Ostfildern, 2012. 

Here is the brief description: Altarpieces are complex works expressing the intellectual, economic and cultural life of a country. This comprehensive volume provides in-depth art-historical and historical analysis of various groups of winged altarpieces in Transylvania, especially the areas inhabited by Saxons. A complete catalog of the surviving Transylvanian altarpieces and lots of color pictures document this important chapter in European history and make this book an indispensable reference work.

The other book was published by Brepols Publishers: Tim Juckes: The Parish and Pilgrimage Church of St Elizabeth in Košice Town, Court, and Architecture in Late Medieval Hungary. Turnhout, 2012.

One of the most important building projects in late medieval Hungary was the reconstruction of the parish and pilgrimage church of St Elizabeth in Košice (present-day Slovakia). The burghers of this prosperous, free royal town decided to rebuild their main church shortly before 1400, and work continued, with several interruptions, into the late fifteenth century. Along with the ambitious and unusual design that emerged, far-reaching artistic connections with centres such as Prague and Vienna ensure the church’s exceptional value for architectural history – not only within Hungary, but in the Central European region as a whole.

It is this value as an art historical document that the present work seeks to exploit. It approaches the church’s fabric as a source of information about patrons, masons, and congregations, attempting to locate the dynamics behind design choices made. This necessitates a detailed reconstruction of the building enterprise itself, before the focus shifts to the impact of the St Elizabeth’s project both in northern Hungary and further afield (Transylvania, Lesser Poland), allowing the town lodge’s remarkable achievements be set in inter-regional context.

More information on both of these books is coming soon here on the Mediaval Hungary blog!

Medieval and Renaissance exhibitions in NYC

Even though New York obviously has no original medieval buildings (except for those built into The Cloisters), the City is home to wonderful collections of medieval art. The Metropolitan Museum houses the largest and best collection of medieval art in the US, much of it on display in the main building, while many more are on view at The Cloisters, the branch of the museum devoted to the European Middle Ages. The Morgan Library and the New York Public Library house hundreds of valuable medieval illuminated manuscripts. (To see how many objects from medieval Hungary these collections hold, have a look at my preliminary checklist). I had a chance to spend two days in New York this past week - instead of these permament collections, I seeked out some Medieval and Renaissance exhibitions, which I will briefly describe below.

St. Mark preaching - Ivory panel from the
so-called Grado Chair, 7th-8th c.

First on my list was the Byzantium and Islam exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum, which actually closes today. This large exhibition is part of a series of shows curated by Helen C. Evans and dedicated to Byzantine Culture (a series which acutually started with Kurt Weitzmann's 1977 exhibition titled The Age of Spirituality). The two earlier exhibitions - “The Glory of Byzantium” in 1997 and “Byzantium: Faith and Power” in 2004 - focused on later periods of Byzantine art (the Middle Byzantine period and the last centuries of the Byzantine empire, respectively), while the current exhibition goes back to the early centuries of Byzantium, exploring the vast southern part of the Empire. The focus is on the diverse cultural traditions (Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Jewish, etc.) and on the emergence of a new force in the region: Islam. The exhibition is arranged thematically, surveying first religious art of the Byzantine empire, then focusing on themes of secular art (such as commerce or dress), finishing with Islamic religious art. The website of the museum gives a very good overview of the material on view, and more in-depth information is provided by tthe accompanying blog.

While the earlier exhibitions mainly focused on highlights of Byzantine art - icons, luxury manuscripts, goldsmith works - and on the connections of Byzantium with western Europe and Latin Christianity, this exhibition was quite different. The exhibition looked to the Eastern and Southern neighbours of Byzantium, and raised a number of very interesting and novel questions about cultural transfer and the co-existence of different traditions. Naturally, the show also includes a number of truly spectacular items: such as the famous Rabbula Gospels from 586 or the wonderful ivories of the so-called Grado Chair. The narrative was clear, and the display - as always at the Met - was wonderfully arranged. Overall, however, I was not quite as impressed with this exhibition as with the 1997 "Glory of Byzantium" - the wonderful display of icons from the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai remains a vivid memory to this day from the earlier exhibition. Due to political circumstances, no loans arrived from Egypt this time. These objects, however, are included in the catalogue - their presence would have definitely made the whole exhibition different.

Head of a man.
Bohemian, 1360-1380 

Currently, there is one more exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum focusing on Medieval and Renaissance art: titled Dürer and Beyond, it displays Central European Drawings, 1400–1700. It starts with a few beautiful Bohemian drawings, well-known from the Prague: The Crown of Bohemia exhibition (2005). In other parts of the museum, there are additional special displays, including the Rylands Haggadah (mid 14th c., Catalonia), Renaissance illuminations from the Robert Lehman Collection, and a handful of Northern Italian paintings from the Accademia Carrara at Bergamo.

The Medieval University of Pécs

General view of the site north of the cathedral
Photo: muemlekem.hu 

Hungary's first university was founded in 1367 at Pécs, with faculties of philosophy, law and medicine (no theology). The university was created by the bishop of Pécs, Vilmos (William), with royal support and by a decree of Pope Urban V. The university was short-lived: already in 1395, King Sigismund created a new insitution at Óbuda, and the school at Pécs stopped working some time in the early 15th century (the University of Óbuda was unsuccessful, too). It is believed that the buildings of the University were located on the north side of cathedral, where in the 12-13th centuries the bishop's palace was erected. Indeed, excavations carried out there in 1980s unearthed a large Gothic building, built on the remains of an earlier, Romanesque structure. The topography of this area, however is rather complicated: among other structures the remains of a 14th-century chapel: the so-called Gilded Chapel of Our Lady (mentioned as such in a charter of Pope Boniface IX in 1401: capella deaurata beate Marie Virginis), founded by Bishop Nicholas (1346-1360). Remains of the chapel and the university dissapeared during the Ottoman Turkish conquest and the wars ensuing (Pécs was occupied in 1543).

The chapel and other remains on the north side of the cathedral were unearthed by Mária Sándor between 1978-1987). Among the most important finds on the site were the extraordinarily fine statues stemming from the former chapel. After this for many decades, the remains of the buildings stood under temporary roofs, while the sculptural fragments from the chapel languished in storage at the local county museum. There were many attempts to make the site accessible, but there was never any money for it - not even during preparations for 2010, when Pécs was European Capital of Culture (when a new visitor center was built for the Early Christian ruins, also located near the cathedral).

Fragment of a stone retable from the Gilded Chapel of Our Lady

 Last year, however, something finally happened - there was a brief new archaeological campaing to clarify some questions, and it was announced that the site will be opened to the public by this year. Along this process a lot of additional medieval architectural fragments have been recovered in the area, especially inside the later walls encircling the complex.

The area is now managed by the Hungarian State Holding Company, and a significant amount was set aside for the erection of a new protective building for the remains of the university and the chapel. In June it was announced that that the university building is ready for visitors, apart from some minor internal restoration tasks. The walls of the medieval fortress structure surrounding the cathedral complex have also been strengthened and a new walkway is being created around them. The opening of this area is scheduled for September, 2012. With this step finally the whole cathedral complex will be accessible to visitors, together with the very rich holdings of medieval sculpture and other remains. I wrote briefly before about the cathedral and the adjacent Cathedral Museum, which holds the Romanesque sculptures from the cathedral. The new area will make accessible the equally significant Gothic remains of Pécs.

Glimpse inside the new museum building at the site
Photo: muemlekem.hu 

Additional reading:

Reports on a research project coordinated by Mária Sándor in 2001-2006, dedicated to the remains of the university and the chapel (with bilbiography).

The MA Thesis of Veronika Csikós, submitted at CEU Budapest in 2008, can be downloaded from the website of the University. The thesis deals with the statues of the Gilded Chapel of Our Lady.

A brief introduction to the site on the Pécs portal.

More information is available in Hungarian at the following sites:

Report on the discovery of carved stones last year, in the online heritage magazine, Műemlékem.hu.

Report on the new excavations at the chapel, on the online journal for medieval archaeology (Archeologia - Altum Castrum Online Magazin), maintained by the Visegrád Palace Museum (with a more detailed report by Gergely Buzás, a PDF-file with lots of images).

An image gallery on the website of the local online newspaper, showing the site in May 2012.

Europa Jagellonica

The exhibition Europa Jagellonica - Art and Culture in Central Europe under the Jagiellonian Dynasty, 1386-1572 is now open at GASK - the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region in Kutná Hora. Coordinated by Jiří Fajt and Susanne Jaeger of the GWZO in Leipzig, this project has been in the making for years. It finally came to fruition as a Czech-German-Polish exhibition project, with further venues in Warsaw and Potsdam. Each site will have a special focus: in Kutná Hora, this is Silver Mining and Art around 1500.

The focus of the exhibition is described as follows: "For the first time in history, the Jagiellonians will be presented as the European dynasty, which strongly influenced art and culture, within the wide international context of Central and East-Central Europe. Around 1500, Central Europe was shaped politically by the Jagiellonians (1386-1572), a Lithuanian-Polish dynasty whose members ruled over a vast region extending from the shores of the Baltic Sea to those of the Adriatic and the Black Seas. They were in fact among the territorially most powerful dynasties of Europe. Tragic events from 1526 onwards dismantled the Jagiellonian supremacy in Central Europe, and their place was effectively taken over by the Habsburgs who maintained their dominance on the European stage until World War I. Thus, Central Europe formed a political-administrative entity long before nation states came into existence. The exhibition accordingly opens up a twofold temporal perspective to its audiences: it is both historical and current. The cornerstones of European society today are formed precisely by the awareness of, the engagement with, and the continuation of these common traditions. They are crucial for present-day Europeans’ identification with their continent and culture."

There is much to be discussed here - I, however, do not enough information about the project to enter into further details. I would just like to mention that despite various plans, there is no Hungarian venue for this exhibition, and there is no real Hungarian partner involved in the preparation of the exhibition (although Jagiellonian rule was significant in Hungary as well, ending with the death of Louis II at the battlefield of Mohács in 1526). There are, however, several Hungarian lenders to the exhibition, including the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Budapest History Museum, among others.

At present, there is very little information available on the project on either the central website of the project, or on the website of GASK. There is more info on the GWZO website, including a description of the exhibition project. The exhibition will be on view in Kutná Hora until 30 September, 2012.

One more remark: the fliers and other materials of the exhibition (see the pictures on the GWZO website, or this earlier version of the exhibition description) feature one of the emblematic and most characteristic works from the Kingdom of Hungary from the late Middle Ages: the Visitation panel by Master MS (Martin Schwarz) from 1506, preserved in the Hungarian National Gallery. Alas, this panel could not travel to the exhibition due to conservation reasons, but can be enjoyed in high resolution on the gigapixel website of the National Gallery or in Google Art Project.

Facsimile of Budapest Concordantiae caritatis published

Death of the Virgin from the Budapest Concordantiae caritatis

As reported by the miniaturaitaliana.com blog, the facsimile edition of the Budapest Concordantiae caritatis (1413, Budapest, Central Library of the Ordo Scholarum Piarum, CX 2) has been published by Schöck Art Print. It is an exclusive, leather-bound limited edition facsimile edition.

As the publisher states: The Budapest Concordantiae caritatis is the most richly illustrated medieval manuscript in Hungary. The work contained in it is that of a fourteenth-century author, Ulrich von Lilienfeld, who between 1345-1351 was the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Lilienfeld, Lower Austria. Concordantiae caritatis is a typological manuscript. Only eight copies of the Concordantiae caritatis known today contain illustrations and of these few the Budapest manuscript is worthy of a high position due to the high quality and completeness of its cycle of illustrations. As the colophon betrays, the text was written in 1413 by the Viennese burgher Stephanus Lang, in his own home. Seven artists, visibly in contact with each other but of varying education, participated in the illustration of the Budapest Concordantiae caritatis. Of them the most talented one can be linked with the circle of the Master of the Sankt Lambrecht Votive Picture, a group whose style became dominant in Viennese panel painting in the first third of the fifteenth century.

The text above was written by Anna Boreczky (National Széchényi Library), whose doctoral dissertation was dedicated to this hitherto little studied manuscript, and who edited the commentary volume to the facsimile. It is to be hoped that a more simple edition of the manuscript and the commentary volume will make this little-known treasury much more widely known. The facsimile edition - along with the edition of the Budapest Apollonius pictus, also edited by Boreczky - was presented today at the Hungarian Academy in Rome.

You can find some information (in Hungarian) about the manuscript on the website of the Piarist Order. You can also read the abstract of Boreczky's dissertation here.

Villa I Tatti at Budapest

Lino Pertile, the director of Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence), as well as Assistant Director Jonathan Nelson are in Budapest these days. Villa I Tatti has had very close connections with Hungary - generally every year they had at least one Fellow from Hungary. This connection is also reflected in the research interests at I Tatti - the Italian (especially Florentine) connections of Hungarian Humanism and early Renaissance art have always been in strong focus. This connection resulted last year in the publication of the book titled Italy and Hungary - Humanism and Art in the Early Renaissance (see my review here). The book will be presented tomorrow at the Budapest History Museum.

While the presentation of the book is clearly one of the main reasons of the visit of I Tatti's directors, they are both giving lectures while here. Lino Pertile gave a lecture in the framework of the Medieval Afternoon at the Central European University, while Jonathan Nelson will give a lecture about 15th century Florentine painters at the Art History Department of ELTE tomorrow. Hopefully these events will further strengthen the ties of Villa I Tatti to Hungary.

Oh, and what else happened at CEU's Medieval Afternoon? The event marked the inauguration of CEU Medieval Radio, which you can find and listen to here.