Medieval History
- Call For Papers: Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Old Questions, New Directions
Conference: Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Old Questions, New Directions Friday 23rd March 2012, Sackler Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum Proposals are invited for papers to be presented at this one-day conference, jointly organised by the Victoria and Albert...
- 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...
- The Salerno Ivories
I posted an image from the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest) on Flickr today - a nice and small ivory panel showing the Creation of birds and fish. I detected from responses that there is some interest in the piece - hence this...
- New Medieval Art Websites, Ii.
My post written last month called attention the a number of interesting new websites. In recent weeks I've noticed some more interesting new websites dedicated to medieval art. First I need to mention a new database, launched on December...
- Medieval Holdings Of Budapest Museums
I often find myself trying to explain the system of Budapest's major art museums to foreigners. Although it is a clear system, it can still be confusing at times. For example, you can find important medieval artworks in all major museums of the capital....
Medieval History
Gothic Ivories in Hungary
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| Diptych, Paris, 14th century. Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest |
At the most recent update of the Gothic Ivories Project, coordinated by The Courtauld Institute of Art, medieval ivories in Hungarian public collections were also added to the database. You can now look at photos of about a dozen Gothic ivories from the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, as well as one single example preserved in the Sculpture Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts. With the 700 ivories added with the most recent update, the database now includes 3800 objects.
It is to be hoped that the next update will add some more objects from Hungary: in particular, it would be great to see the three late Gothic bone saddles from the collection of the Hungarian National Museum. Many other saddles from the period of Emperor Sigismund are already online - including the Batthyany saddle stemming from Körmend in western Hungary (and now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston).
There are a few more great ivories in Hungarian ecclesiastical collections - in particular the wing of a diptych at the Cathedral Treasury of Gy?r (illustrated below). The Gothic Ivories project is of course a great resource for the research of ivory - it helped me to identify a surviving part of the other wing of this diptych, kept today at The Art Institute of Chicago. Hopefully, the wing at Gy?r can be added to the database soon. In the meantime, we can also find photos of some complete diptychs on the Gothic Ivories Project website, which can help us reconstruct the Gy?r-Chicago diptych as well: such as this image. (See on this subject the article by Katalin Dávid, published in Ars Decorativa vol. 7 (1982), and available online here.)
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| Right wing of a diptych with scenes from the Life of the Virgin. Gy?r, Cathedral Treasury |
To read about more medieval ivories once in Hungary, have a look at my previous post about the Fejérváry collection!
- Call For Papers: Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Old Questions, New Directions
Conference: Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Old Questions, New Directions Friday 23rd March 2012, Sackler Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum Proposals are invited for papers to be presented at this one-day conference, jointly organised by the Victoria and Albert...
- 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...
- The Salerno Ivories
I posted an image from the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest) on Flickr today - a nice and small ivory panel showing the Creation of birds and fish. I detected from responses that there is some interest in the piece - hence this...
- New Medieval Art Websites, Ii.
My post written last month called attention the a number of interesting new websites. In recent weeks I've noticed some more interesting new websites dedicated to medieval art. First I need to mention a new database, launched on December...
- Medieval Holdings Of Budapest Museums
I often find myself trying to explain the system of Budapest's major art museums to foreigners. Although it is a clear system, it can still be confusing at times. For example, you can find important medieval artworks in all major museums of the capital....