Dóra Mérai, Sára Stenczer:

The Bakócz Chapel

Originally, Tamás Bakócz was a Franciscan monk, he studied at Padova and Cracow. As a talented person he was discovered by Mathias Corvinus himself, and became the secretary of the king. In a short time he got the most prominent ecclesia titles, among others he was the archbishop of Esztergom. In 1507 he became the patriarch of Constantinople. Five years later he went to Rome, and after the death of Pope Julius the II., he had a high chance to be the pope. As we know it today the result, he failed, because his rival was Gulio Medici, later Leo the X. to keep off Bakocz from his court the pope send him back to Hungary, to organize a crusade against the Turks. After returning Rome he obtained much power than ever. He was the most important person under the reign of Vladislaus the II.
As a leading patron he gave orders for many works of arts, including the Bakocz chapel in Esztergom, a city in the Danube bend. This town was the center of the Hungarian Church.
It was an independent building in the south side of the cathedral, named after Saint Adalbert. This saint crowned our first king Saint Stephan.
The chapel was founded, as a memorial monument of the archbishop, the foundation stone was laid in 1506, the same time when Julius the II. had the Saint Peter built in Rome. The sepulchral chapel had a complicated story. Under the Turkish occupation, the cathedral was destroyed, but the chapel curiously survived.
In the XIX. Century a new cathedral had been built in the style of classicism. The cathedral is dedicated to Saint Peter, so the new apse is looking to the west. Now the building is no more independent on the south side, that's why they had to exchange the south side for the north side.
The former entrance was walled up and the inner surface faced with red marble. With the turning of the chapel, the former recess with the stalls became the entrance from the cathedral.
The chapel is cubic centrally planned with a dome. In the middle there is a large, semicircular window, which is today the only source of natural light.
Each one of the four side is extended by a recess with barrel vaulting. The ground plan therefore produces the effect of a Greek cross, but externally we see that the mass of the chapel forms a cube-like block.
One of the four recesses, the one of the secresty side is twice as deep as are the other three. The architectural system of the interior is extraordinarily clear and logical, made from red marble.
The surface has 3 zones, the lowest you can see arches. The one on the north side is much more higher than the other three. The cornice above the three lower arches contains an inscription from 1507. The next is the zone of arches again, with pendantives. On the pendantives we can find four coat of arms. Two of them show the Bakócz symbols. The third contains the royal coats of arms of the Jagellons, and the fourth shows a representation of Georg Szathmáry, bishop of Pécs.
The third zone is the dome and the lantern. The dome was not built of stone, but guilded copper plates with coffered relief work, mounted on an iron skeleton. The 96 plates showed the life of Christ and saints, which are lost now.
The chapel had an influence to the Sigismund chapel in Krakow. The architect of this chapel was Bartolomeo Berrecci, who went to Krakow from Italy via Hungary, so he could see the chapel in Esztergom..
The Bakócz chapel is the earliest central building in the renaissance north from the Alps.
The type of centrally planned rectangular space covered with dome in the 15^th century can be traced back to Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo (1420-29). The Pazzi Chapel is its variant extended on both sides, covered with a so-called umbrella dome.
The next contribution was made by Antonio Manetti and Antonio Rossellino with the Chapel of the Portuguese Cardinal (1461-66) that adjoins the San Miniato al Monte. It's a rectangular space with extensions connected by semicircular arches. The pillar-beam architecture combined with arcades had already been used by Brunelleschi in San Lorenzo and by Alberti in Florence, at the tribune of SS. Annunziata and Mantova, S. Andrea for antic Roman influence.
The Piccolomini Chapel in S. Maria in Monte Oliveto was built about 1470 by Antonio Rossellino. Here the pilasters are no more pressed into the corners but they frame independently the side walls, as in the case of the Bakócz Chapel.
The Barbadori Chapel adjoining the sacristy of the Santo Spirito can be considered as the immediate antecedent of the Bakócz Chapel. It's created by Giuliano da Sangallo (1489-97). However, the space is not covered with a pendentive dome but a simple domical vault, and it's not enlarged by means of recesses, the arcades along the side walls are sunk into the wall only as deep as the thickness of the architectural frame.
The plan of the Bakócz Chapel follows the system of the Chapel of the Portuguese Cardinal, but the extensions are deeper and much more narrow. For all these facts its architect must have Toscan origins, from the circle completing the Santo Spirito (the circle of Giuliano da Sangallo and Salvi d'Andrea). According to Sándor Tóth certain features of the building suggest the plan having been corrected on the spot. There are particulars that are in relation to the Santo Spirito workshop: The framings of the round windows above the cornice in Esztergom are similar to the western window of the Santo Spirito, and the lunette of the western portal is an antecedent of the sacristy door of the Bakócz Chapel.
The set of motifs of the decorative carvings can be brought into connection with the circle of Pietro Lombardi, Mauro Coducci and Ambrogio Barroccio (Venice, S. Giobbe, S. Maria dei Miracoli; Murano, S. Michele). Jolán Balogh identified Benedetto da Rovezzano as the closest parallel, who worked in Florence at the beginning of the 16^th century (S. Giovanni, Gualberto tomb, now converted into an altar of the S. Trinitŕ; SS. Apostoli, the tomb of Odo Altoviti). In Hungary, its analogues are a decorative carving from the royal villas of Nyék, and the Szathmáry-tabernacle.
The motifs were planted from Venice to Verona (S. Anastasia), Mantova (the portal of S. Andrea), and Urbino, where Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, the uncle and master of Andrea Ferrucci came in contact with the members of the Lombardi-workshop. After, he left for Venice where he took part in the building of S. Maria dei Miracoli.
Andrea Ferrucci played a decisive rule in the constructions of the Bakócz Chapel. He is mentioned by Vasari in the 1568 edition of the "Vite": "Fu di sua mano ancora una sepoltura di marmo, che fu mandata similmente in Strigonia, cittŕ d'Ungheria; nella quale era una Nostra Donna molto ben condotta, con altre figure: nella quale sepoltura fu poi riposto il corpo del cardinale di Strigonia." Jolán Balogh and Sándor Tóth interpretate the word "sepoltura" as the lost tomb of Bakócz, Miklós Horler derives the whole building from Ferrucci.
Andrea Ferrucci was born in Fiesole in a large artist family. In his early years he visited Naples and Rome. His master was Franceso di Simone Ferrucci as mentioned above. His first documented work was a chapel for the parish of Fiesole (1492-94). From this Gondi Chapel only the altar has survived, transferred to the old sacristy of the cathedral. The marmour altar of San Girolamo, Fiesole was attributed to him according to Vasari; now it is in London, Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Chapel or "Tribune of Julius II" in Imola is a rectangular building, its elevation is a simplified variant of the Bakócz Chapel It's dated to 1506 too.
From about 1500 Ferrucci worked in the sculptors' workshop of S. Maria del Fiore, and he was the head of the workshop from 1512 until his death. He worked on the unfinished gallery of the drum. According to Vasari he made a fountain for the king of Hungary in 1517, and he was allowed to carve its sculptures in the workshop.
In 1517 he was entrusted by Michelangelo to take charge of the facade constructions of S. Lorenzo, and from 1524 he was responsible for the building of the Medici Sepulchral Chapel too.
The altar of the Bakócz Chapel is an example for the retable type that developed and spread in Italy during the last four decades of the 15^th century under the effect of the sepulchral wall monuments ( The archetype was Leonardo Bruni's monument by Bernardo Rossellino). Two of its clear antecedents are in Naples, S. Maria in Monte Oliveto: the Nativity Altar of Antonio Rossellino and Benedetto da Maiano in Piccolomini Chapel (1470), and the Annunciation Altar in Mastroguidici Chapel (1489). The architecture is divided into three parts by corinthian pilasters, with three part cornice and pediment. There is a relief on the central panel and there are statues standing in niches covered with shell motifs on the lateral parts. Ferrucci combined this altar scheme with the architecture of antique Roman tripartite triumphal arches when constructing the altars of the Gondi Chapel and S. Girolamo in Fiesole. Very similar is the Corbinelli Altar in Florence, S. Spirito by Andrea Sansovino. These two latter ones are the closest analogues to the Bakócz Altar; the parallels of their broken cornice and semicircular lunette can be found on the Esztergom altar with Infant Christ and adoring angels. The difference is that while the Italian examples has the lunette only above the central part, the whole structure of the Bakócz Chapel is crowned with high parapet and semicircular pediment. The tondos of the lateral parts are eliminated.
To sum up, Andrea Ferrucci's first works shows the effect of Antonio Rossellino's Naples circle; however, later, at the beginning of the 16^th century he follows Michelangelo's footsteps.
Another master of the chapel can be defined namely: Ioannes Fiorentinus. The decorative carvings can be connected to his few signed works. The attribution is doubtless in the case of the tomb of Gergely Forgách (Felsoelefánt- Lefantovce, SLO), the baptistery at Menyo (Mineu, RO) and the sepulchral monument of Jan Laski in Gniezno, Poland. Jan Laski gave the commission for his own tomb and some other ones during his 1516 visit at Bakócz. Ioannes Fiorentinus most likely arrived from the workshop of Andrea Ferrucci in Esztergom at the beginning of the chapel constructions.
The Chapel itself can be considered as a summary of the results of the 15^th century Italian architecture in Central Europe, it is a unique product of the Florentine Renaissance over the Alps.