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Professor Anna Różycka-Bryzek (1928-2005)

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Smorąg Różycka M.

Modus. Prace z historii sztuki

2006

vol. 7

5-32

Was one of the most eminent Polish art historians, among whom she stood out as a specialist in the history of Byzantine and Slavonic-Byzantine art. The course for almost fifty years of her research work, was set by the Byzantinc-Ruthenian paintings commissioned by the Jagiellons, to which she devoted her entire life. This study concerned three surviving groups of paintings: in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity in the castle of Lublin, in the chancels of Sandomierz Cathedral and the collegiate church at Wislica - founded by Wladyslaw Jagiello, while the fourth set, in the Holy Cross Chapel on Wawel, was executed on the order of Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk (Casimir the Jagiellonian). The scientific value of these studies encompassed three fundamental aspects: material-factual, interpretative, and methodological, in all of them constituting the source of a sound knowledge and inspiration. She was equally dedicated to continuing the work of her master and teacher, Professor Wojslaw Mole, consolidating the position of Byzantine studies at university level and finally leading to the creation in 1989 of the Department of the History of Byzantine Art, the first in Poland, within the Institute of the History of Art of the Jagiellonian University. There was a special place in her life for her pupils to whom she gave her heart. In her early study Prof. Rozycka proved that the frescoes in the small church of Santa Maria foris Portas at Castelseprio, in terms of formal characteristics close to the classicizing style of the Macedonian renaissance, were in fact a heterogeneous work in which middle-Byzantine features were combined with Carolingian elements. In later years she did not devote much time to general issues of Byzantine art, focusing on research into Orthodox Church art in Poland and the related question of the mutual influence of Eastern and Western Christianity. In her study of the picture of Our Lady of Częstochowa, she focused her attention on presenting the picture in the light of analytical-comparative art historical research. Considering the picture itself to be an excellent source of study, as a result of meticulous analysis she came to believe that the original image of Our Lady of Hodegeiria type with the Byzantine hieratic arrangement of figures, was repainted in the 14th and 15th centuries. Each time, however, these were renovating measures which did not disturb the essential features of the prototype. She ascribed the doubtless status of an icon in a historical sense due to its formal features and in a spiritual sense owing to its cult in the convent to the mosaic picture of Our Lady of Hagiosoritissa type in the convent of Poor Clares in Cracow. She established that the Cracow convent's tradition linked this late 12th century work of an anonymous Constantinopolitan master with the Blessed Salomea and held in particular veneration as a relic of the founder of the convent and as a miraculous image of intercessory power at the hour of death, brought to the bed of the dying sisters.

Lech Kalinowski and the History of Byzantine Art

100%

Smorąg Różycka M.

Modus. Prace z historii sztuki

2005

vol. 6

5-18

Studying the list of Professor Lech Kalinowski (who passed away on 15th June 2004) works in the book 'Symbolae historiae artium', supplemented with later publications recorded in a volume 'Magistro et Amico...', the authoress points out that the scope of his scholarly interests encompassed both works on medieval and post-mediaval art and research methods in the history of art. He also introduced into the Polish literature on the subject some fundamental ideas concerning Byzantine sacred architecture and historically viewed stylistic changes in painting and ivory reliefs. It was already in his first, monumental work on the medieval Pieta that he specified basic formulations pertaining to a Byzantine component of European culture, to develop them in his later studies on Giotto's oeuvre. In his paper on the Pieta (1953), L. Kalinowski expressed his strong conviction that Byzantine medieval art and the art of the Latin Middle Ages belonged in the same sphere of civilization. He returned to this idea in one of his last papers, where, considering the possibility of depicting the entire history of Western medieval art, he observed that on this question 'it is only known that the fundamental role in the origins and development of Western medieval art was played by ancient - Late Classical and Byzantine - art'. This statement reveals an academic link between Kalinowski and Aby Warburg and at the same time places him next to Erwin Panofsky. Further elements of the relationship between Byzantine and Western art were presented by Kalinowski in his studies of Giotto's oeuvre. In his cyclic academic lectures on Giotto he repeatedly posed the question of the direct dependence of Giotto's works on Byzantine art, exemplifying it with the composition in the Cappella dell'Arena. In a paper on the programme of the Paduan paintings Kalinowski expressed an opinion that they differ from the contemporary Western pictorial art in having two ideological axes: one following the descending order of the Marian and Christological cycles unfolding in registers between two scenes, that is, The Archangel Gabriel Being Charged with His Task on the east wall of the chancel arch and The Last Judgment on the west wall, which mark out the other, horizontal axis. The latter, rightly called the liturgical axis, operates, according to him, when we enter the chapel and our eyes turn in an eastward direction, and, on leaving it, when we take the last look at the west wall. He found the thus identified conception of the programme of the frescoes in the Cappella dell'Arena to have been modelled on Byzantine programmes read in an identical order by Otto Demus and Henry Maguire. Furthermore, he took up the question of Giotto's links with the Byzantine tradition in a short paper on the Trial by Fire scene in the Bardi chapel at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. All of Kalinowski's scholarly and didactic achievements are marked by a desire to demonstrate in a work of art an inseparable connection between ideas and artistic forms. In the research hierarchy of identifying individual elements of this bond he gave priority to a work of art, which in its internal structure was autonomous and only the interpretation of the ideological sense of this structure related it to the culture of a particular epoch.

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Professor Anna Różycka-Bryzek (1928-2005)

Lech Kalinowski and the History of Byzantine Art