Presentation of three books on medieval Slavonia

Three new books on medieval Slavonia will be presented next week at the Central European University of Budapest. All three books are registers, mostly dedicated to the early medieval artistic production and culture between the Sava and the Drava rivers. The first book, Register of Sites and Monuments of Earlier Medieval Art between the Sava and the Drava Rivers, covers 565 medieval sites in northern Croatia with short descriptions and bibliography. The Register of Archaeological Finds and Sites in Bjelovar-Bilogora County lists all the known cultural sites in Bjelovar-Bilogora County from prehistory to the Late Middle Ages. The volume entitled Discovered Plains is dedicated to medieval art (mostly architecture) in eastern Slavonia.

The books will be presented by József Laszlovszky (CEU), Miklós Takács (Institute of Archaeology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and Béla Zsolt Szakács (CEU/Pázmány Péter Catholic University).

The books to be presented are the following: 

VLADIMIR PETER GOSS: Registar položaja i spomenika ranije srednjovjekovne umjetnosti u međurjecju Save i Drave [Register of Sites and Monuments of Early Medieval Art between the Sava and the Drava River]

GORAN JAKOVLJEVIC: Registar arheoloških nalaza i nalazišta Bjelovarsko-bilogorske županije [Register of Archaeological Finds and Sites in Bjelovar-Bilogora County]

VJEKOSLAV JUKIC: Otkrivena ravnica: srednjovjekovna umjetnost istocne Slavonije [Discovered Plains: the Medieval Art of Eastern Slavonia]

The event will be at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 12, 2012 at CEU #409 (Budapest, V. Nádor u. 9.)

The official invitation is available on the website of the Medieval Studies Department of CEU. More information on the books is available at Romanika.net.

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.

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.

Collection Databases of Hungarian Art Museums

2012 represented a sort of breakthrough for Hungarian art museums in the process of putting their collections online. When I wrote about the medieval holdings of Budapest museums about two years ago, there was not much to report on in this respect. The situation is now a lot better, and keeps improving - you can now find an increasing number of medieval art objects online. I will give a brief overview of each of these  databases.

Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Maso di Banco: Coronation of the Virgin
Florence, 1335-1340  

The Museum of Fine Arts launched two separate databases this year: one is a general collection database, which provides basic inventory data on thousands of artworks. Integrated into the newly rewamped museum website, the database is available in English as well - although the translation seems to have been made with a translation software, and contains a lot of peculiarities and inaccuracies. The quality of the images varies a great deal: in some departments (for example Sculpture) all the archival pictures seem to have made it into the database, while some objects are illustrated with just one image, or no image at all. You can browse the objects based on the collections and also by period, so it is fairly easy to get to the medieval and Renaissance objects. 

Florentine master: Siren in a medallion 

The Museum also launched another, more scholarly database: an online catalogue of Italian and French prints before 1620. The catalogue, containing 4.604 objects, is the first complete publication of a section from the rich collection of 100.000 prints preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts. The catalogue was edited by Eszter Seres and Zoltán Kárpáti, and provides detailed catalogue records of each print, as well as new, zoomable images. This material does not seem to be integrated into the general collection database mentioned above - so if you are after prints, you have to come to this specialized website. There are a few dozen 15th century prints in the collection as well.

Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest

Book of Hours for Lodovico Gonzaga.
Florence, 1469-1478

The Museum of Applied Arts also launched its collection database, which is continuously being filled up with images and records, and currently contains over 2000 objects. There are plenty of medieval objects in this rich and varied collection of decorative arts, some of which have already appeared in the database. At this point, the database is only available in Hungarian, but an English language version is currently in preparation. The interface is very easy to use, and there are various ways to browse: by collection or with virtual tours, which present the material arranged according to various topics. Medium-size images can be downloaded for personal use after registration.

Most popular posts on Medieval Hungary

The end of the year marks the end of my third year of blogging. Along the way, I have posted 120 posts on various topics related to Hungarian medieval art, which generated over 90.000 page views to this date. My blog was featured in several online journals - for example in Vidimus or in Peregrinus, and several posts have been picked up by other blogs and online news media. I will give a sampling below of the most popular posts on the Medieval Hungary blog, giving a brief update about their topics as well.

The Digital Journal and SCAtoday.net both picked up the report on the discovery a grave from the period of the Magyar Conquest. Found neat the village of Bugyi, the sabretache plate discovered in the grave has since been cleaned and restored, and showed at a traveling exhibition (titled "Not without a trace...") organized by the Pest County Museum system. It was also included in an exhibition first organized at the Houses of Parliament in Budapest, which was aimed at showing the most spectacular recent archaeological finds, in order to pressure lawmakers to not weaken cultural heritage laws. Although this attempt was unsuccesful, the exhibition itself was successful, and is now travelling around the country. The exhibition is accompanied by a very nicely produced website, which is only available in Hungarian. Below you can find a picture of the sabretache plate in its conserved state.

10th century sabretache plate from Bugyi-Felsővány
(source: mvmsz.info) 

Moving on to later centuries, most interest was generated by my report on the discovery of 14th century frescoes right in the middle of Budapest, in the Inner City Parish Church of Pest.  The news was picked up by Medieval News and other online sources. My brief report on the find, consisting of two blog posts (see part I and part II) was later summarized for the newsletter of the International Center of Medieval Art (April 2011 issue), while my report on Hungarian azurite, found in the background of the painting, was picked up by National Geographic Hungary (May 2011). I also reported on some publications about the murals in a third blog post.

Detail of the Virgin and Child at the Inner City Parish Church, Pest 

Romanika.net presents: Art History - The Future is Now

Romanika.net, a Croatian website dedicated to the project "The Romanesque between the Sava and the Drava Rivers and European Culture," published a new online book on medieval art. Titled Art History - The Future is Now, the book contains studies published in Honor of Professor Vladimir Peter Goss celebrating his 70th birthday, 45 years of publication, and 40 years of university teaching. The editors of the volume are Maja Cepetić, Danko Dujmović, Vjekoslav Jukić, Aleksandra Nikoloska.

The studies in the pdf volume are published in English or Italian language (also including some in Croatian and German), and their subject matter ranges from ancient portraiture to Romanesque architecture and sculpture to Italian Gothic art.  The first section represents contributions by the 'Masters and their Heirs Apparent', the second by the 'Young Lions'. The authors come from various countries (9 total) - and include one Hungarian, Béla Zsolt Szakács, who writes on Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome.  Among the authors there are Archeologists, Art Historians, Cultural Anthropologists, Linguists, reflecting Professor Goss’ true interdisciplinary orientation – of looking for the best in related fields. The book also contains a biography and bibliography of Professor Goss, as well as a study by Goss himself - reflecting on the present state and future of art and its history.

While calling attention to this new online publication, I would also like to recommend the romanika.net website in its entirety, as it reflects the interests of Professor Goss very well. The research project, to which this website belongs, surveys Romanesque sites between the Sava and the Drava rivers - the area now generally known as "Continental Croatia", which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary throughout the Middle Ages (equalling the northern part of Slavonia). The project is dedicated to "discovering the sites lost and forgotten long time ago, and thus creating outlines of a totally lost and forgotten cultural landscape. The main goal is to make the art of the Pre-Romanesque (both pre-Christian Slavic and Christian) and Romanesque in Croatia receive recognition and appreciation it fully deserves."

From this space and in the form of this brief post, I would like to salute Vladimir Goss, and wish him a lot of success in carrying this important project further! Sretan rođendan!

Maja Cepetić, Danko Dujmović, Vjekoslav Jukić, Aleksandra Nikoloska, eds.: Art History - the Future is Now. Studies in Honor of Professor Vladimir Goss. Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2012. 433 pp. Available online at: http://www.romanika.net/art-history-the-future-is-now-studies-in-honor-of-professor-vladimir-p-goss/

New book on Royal Seals of the Árpád Dynasty

A new book, written by Imre Takács on Royal Seals of the Árpád Dynasty was presented today at the Hungarian National Archives. The book is the first part of a new series, titled Corpus Sigillorum Hungariae Mediaevalis. The series aims to provide catalogue of Hungarian medieval seals - including royal seals, aristocratic seals as well as seals of towns, religious institutions and other organizations. The first volume is dedicated to seals issued by Hungarian kings of the Árpád Dynasty (1000-1301), and includes a total of 48 entries. The use of royal seals was first referred to in the foundation charter of the Abbey of Pannonhalma, issued in 1001. However, no surviving examples of the earliest royal seals - including seals of King Stephen I - are known, thus the series of examples starts with a humble lead bulla of King Peter (1039-1042, 1044-1046), followed by the seal of summons of Andrew I (1046-1060). Most spectacular are the great gold seals of 12th and 13th century kings - such as the gold bulla of King Emeric (1196-1204), seen on the cover of the book (and here to the left). The book also includes four seals of queens from the period, as well as a few seals issued by princes of the Árpád Dynasty.

In addition of a full catalogue of these seals (48 entries total), the book also contains an extensive introductory study by Imre Takács, dedicated to art historical questions. Subjects include 'type history and iconography', as well as questions of 'image and style'. The rich material in the comparative illustrations make clear that these miniature masterworks of goldsmith work are related not only to western European royal seals, but also to contemporary monumental sculpture. 

The full text of the book is included in an English translation as well, making the material accessible for the wider public.

Takács, Imre: Az Árpád-házi királyok pecsétjei - Royal Seals of the Árpád Dynasty. Corpus Sigillorum Hungariae Mediaevalis I. Budapest, Magyar Országos Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives), 2012. 192 pp.