Canadian Slavonic Papers

The Art of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe: Hungary, Bohemia, Poland by JANBIALOSTOCKIReview by: John E. BowltCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 19, No. 4 (December 1977), pp.530-531Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40867164 .

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530 I Canadian Slavonic Papers

whether this cheap quip is owed to the author or his translator. The mode of expression is unusually involved, turgid and frequently open to objections resulting from lexical, grammatical and stylistic considerations. This valuable and thoughtful contribution to the history of the Russian mind in its philosophical manifestations would have deserved a much more readable, clear and straight- forward translation, all the unavoidable technicalities of philosophical discourse notwithstanding.

[Heinrich Α. Stammler, University of Kansas]

The Art of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe: Hungary, Bohemia, Poland. JAN BIALOSTOCKI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. xxiv, 312 pp. $25.00.

Although a substantial amount of literature has been devoted to the Baroque period in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, less attention has been focussed on the Renaissance style in those countries with regard either to painting or to sculpture and architecture. At first glance, it might seem hazardous to discuss the art of the Renaissance in three separate nations within the covers of a single book. But, as Bialostocki demonstrates clearly, there were common attitudes and aspirations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Eastern Europe that allow us to think in terms of a synchronie development of style (Bialostocki is careful to emphasize the term "Renaissance style"). All parties shared similar elements of geography and topography, all relied on Italian stimuli, all favoured similar areas of artistic activity. Through text and illustration, Bialostocki describes these common roots and the ways in which vernacular trends were gradually grafted, producing such national monuments as the Myszkowski Chapel in Cracow, the Town Hall at Bardejov, and Hradshin Castle in Prague.

Bialostocki divides his essay into six sections, all of which deal with sculpture and architecture rather than with painting: Humanism and Early Patronage, The Castle, The Chapel, The Tomb, The Town, Classicism, Mannerism and Vernacular. In each section, Bialostocki selects what he considers to be important manifestations of the particular category. In section two, for example, he gives considerable attention to the Summer Residence at Visegrád and the Wawel Castle in Cracow (with its curious disproportions of buttresses and courtyard galleries). Section three contains, of course, a detailed description of the Bakócz Chapel in Esztergom and some intriguing observations on the Sigismund Chapel of Wawel Cathedral, one of the greatest products of the High Renaissance. In this context, Bialostocki suggests Brunnelleschi's dome for Florence Cathedral as the probable source of derivation for the Sigismund dome, and he attempts a provocative theory as to why the patently erotic Venus Anadyomene should decorate the altar niche there. Perhaps the most useful section concerns the Tomb since Poland and Hungary were, after all, the recipients of the finest sepulchral architecture in the Western world, especially of the gisant and accoudé types, even if certain postures were borrowed directly from Italian painting (cf., Berrecci's Tomb of Sigismund I at Wawel Cathedral with Botticelli's Mars and Venus). The fifth section, on the Town, is of less value since Bialostocki chooses to examine individual structures within the city, e.g., the townhall and the clothhall, rather than the integrated or interconnected structure of the Renaissance town: if it is true that "almost throughout the sixteenth century the Renaissance was

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Book Reviews | 531

understood in eastern Europe as a new style of adorning buildings" (p. 61), then how was this conception applied to the townhouse and the lowly dwelling? In these contexts do we meet the same ingenuity that avoided Gothic verticality by resorting to the sunken roof and to the gable-parapet? It was, indeed, the rapid extension of the Renaissance style in the sixteenth century to vulgar, secular forms ("as if made of pastry by a naive hand" [p. 88]) that accelerated the decline of the Renaissance and, in some degree, the advance of the Baroque style.

Although Bialostocki's main text covers only 100 pages, it is remarkably compact; at times, as the section on the Tomb, it is too dense for easy assimilation. Within this limited space, Biatostocki does not undertake any exhaustive formal analysis of motifs and symbols - which is perhaps the only serious failing of the book. However, the maps, diagrams, statistics, accurate historical data, abundant illustrations and adequate bibliography supply the basis for further aesthetic investigation and evaluation. Biatostocki proves that, despite their "peripheral" location, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia constituted a thriving artistic colony during the Renaissance period (after all, Cracow was one of Europe's leading intellectual centres in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) and they were as much a part of Western culture as were Germany and Britain. They interpreted the Florentine style (rather than that of Northern Italy) and supplemented it according to their own capabilities. So striking were the results, as with Wawel Cathedral and Bakócz Chapel, that at times we are tempted to agree that "in Hungary, Slovakia or Poland, we can meet the Renaissance ... in a more original, pure form, and can already find its impact there at a time when the expressive and decorative Late Gothic style was reaching its climax in France, Germany, Spain and England" (p. 2).

[John E. Bowlt, University of Texas at Austin]

Die Ballade von der Arta-Brücke. GEORGIOS A. MEGAS. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1976. 204 pp.

This is a clever book, well-written, well-printed and edited, and embodying an impressive amount of work. The plates are very good, and the translation into German excellent.

The ballad of the young wife walled into a bridge in order to appease an underworld spirit who, otherwise, threatens to pull down the structure is common to all Balkan peoples. It may be heard in all Bulgarian lands, and as far north as Transylvania and Hungary. Being translated and sung thousands of times, often by illiterate folk-singers, the ballad has inevitably produced a great many variants. The author of the book under review has surveyed the Greek ones, samples of which are reproduced in an appendix. He also discusses previous studies by scholars from countries other than Greece, especially the one by Dr. Lajos Vargyas, who believed the song to be of Hungarian origin.

Dr. Megas agrees that the Greek variants appear crude when compared with the Slavonic (i.e. Bulgarian) and Romanian variants, although he does not see in this circumstance the result of vulgarization by uncouth Greek bards. Rather he is inclined to believe that the cruder Greek form was the original one, subsequently refined by more sophisticated Bulgarian and Romanian poets. The book would have been more convincing had the author taken into consideration some major historical and geographical facts. No less than sixty specimens in

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