CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Ilkó, Krisztina |
|---|---|
| Title | Salvation in Angevin Hungary: The Iconography of the Scala Salutis on the Fourteenth Century Wall Painting of Zeliezovce |
| Summary | The aim of this thesis is to place the wall painting (c. 1388) of the St James Church in Želiezovce (Slovakia) into a broader iconographical context. The fresco depicts a debate for the soul of the dying knight György Becsei between the Devil, the Virgin Mary, Christ, the Father, and the angels. Earlier scholarship suggested that the subject of the fresco was formed only around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, and came to Hungary from German or Czech territories. I contribute research on the wall painting of Želiezovce by researching its historical, theological, and art historical aspects. With the help of unpublished archival sources I have contextualized the history of the town, its landlords, and the church in the fourteenth century. My observations on the architectural history of the church and its wall paintings are based on personal observations, since I was contributing to the art historical researches which were going on alongside the restoration research which started in the summer of 2014. I was focusing on the visual sources and analogies of the fresco with the help of comparative iconography. The goal of the thesis is to demonstrate the existence of the Scala Salutis as an independent iconographical type beginning with its first monumental piece, the wall painting in Želiezovce. I collected sixteen pictorial and nine textual examples which form the basis of this study. In debate with the earlier scholarship I localize the origins of the iconographical type to the first part of the fourteenth century in western Europe, probably in France. I connect its spread with the popularity of the topic depicted, emphasized by the visio beatifica debate which began in the 1330s. |
| Supervisor | Klaniczay, Gábor; Szakács, Béla Zsolt; Sághy, Marianne; Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Harald |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/ilko_krisztina.pdf |
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