DOI article:
Smorąg Różycka, Małgorzata: Profesor Anna Różycka Bryzek (1928-2005)
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19072#0030
systematically until 1960. The wide rangę of subject-matter encompassed vanous ąuestions of
Europcan art, medieval as well as modern, without particular cmphasis on Byzantine art. He
focused on it mainly at seminars whose syllabus, centred on Orthodox Church art. had been set
by him as carly as the interwar period when he supemsed the doctoral theses of. among others,
Anna Marsówna and Celina Osieczkowska, and m the postwar years supplemented with his
own synthetic studies: Sztuka rosyjska do roku 1914 (Russian Art until 1914) (1955) andSztuka
Słowian południowych {South Slaronic Art) (1962). Prof. Różycka attended these seminars
occasionally, as she later admitted in an article dedicated to her master. Ho\vever. this contact
must have been much more reguiar and intense sińce soon. in 1961, thus simultaneously with the
publication of a catalogue of Italian art, she defended at the Jagiellonian University her doctoral
dissertation entitled Bizantyńsko-ruskie malowidła ściernie w Kaplicy Swietokrzyskiej na Wawelu
1470 r. (Byzantine-Russian Murals in the Holy Cross Chapel on Wawel 1470). written under
the supervision of Prof. Mole. In private talks she freąuently, and always with great excitement,
emphasized his exceptional role in the choice of her academic career, whereas in her publications
she was extremely restrained in this respect. bringing to the fore Prof. Mole:s services to the
Polish history of art, particularly to Byzantine studies which, as she put it, ''he inaugurated as
a specialized university discipline". She showed more emotion in the very eloąuent conclusion
of her recollection: "In addition to achievements that can be expressed in facts and numbers,
there exists an indefmable sphere of influence wielded by outstanding personalities, which also
brings tangible effects. In the case of Prof. Mole this was an aura of dignity and authority which
surrounded him and was perceptible in his deportment and demeanour. Due to these ąualities, as
soon as you broke through this apparent barrier of reserve, you entered the circle of the sublime
knowledge of Art the experience and study of which gave meaning to his life".
It was undoubtedly under Prof. Mole's influence that she formulated the credo of her further
research in two successive publications: a paper on the frescoes at Castelseprio (1962) and her
doctoral dissertation published in Studia do dziejów Wawelu (vol. 3, 1968).
It is worth recalling here that she undertook these researches at the moment of deep internal
transformations of the history of art as a scholarly discipline and the ensuing polarization of
researchers' attitudes on two basie planes: the content of a work of art and its formal character-
istics. The first was influenced by Erwin Panofsky's new method of iconographic analysis and
synthesis, presented for the first time in 1930 in German in his study Hercules at the Crossroads,
which, however, was only popularized by later publications in English. The second was connected
with discarding the conventional system of linear. chronological classification of the so-called
historical styles in favour of the typology of individual features of the artistic language which
- due to European culture being deep-rooted in the tradition of Graeco-Roman antiquity - had
been reduced to the dichotomy between the classical and the non-classical style.
Prof. Różycka had the opportunity to see the frescoes in the smali church of Santa Maria
Foris Portas at Castelseprio near Milan during her stay in Italy in 1957 as a Ministry of Culture
and Art scholarship holder. This surviving fragment of the group of medieval murals, comprising
two zones of figural depictions on the apse wali and on the east side of the triumphal arch as
well as a seąuence of painted drapery beneath them. amazes by the freshness of antiąue forms;
exposed accidentally during military operations in 1944. it marks a breakthrough in researches
into the artistic heritage of classical antiąuity and its revival in the Middle Ages. At the same
time it is still the subject of an animated discussion on its dating and artistic origin, inaugurated
by Alberto de Capitani D'Arzago's publication in 1948. The majority of researchers linked them
with the art of the pre- and posticonoclastic periods ranging from the 7th to 9th centuries, and.
in accordance with the contemporary state of knowledge of the leading Mediterranean artistic
circles in that period, ascribed them to masters from Alexandria, Antioch or. generally. the
24
Europcan art, medieval as well as modern, without particular cmphasis on Byzantine art. He
focused on it mainly at seminars whose syllabus, centred on Orthodox Church art. had been set
by him as carly as the interwar period when he supemsed the doctoral theses of. among others,
Anna Marsówna and Celina Osieczkowska, and m the postwar years supplemented with his
own synthetic studies: Sztuka rosyjska do roku 1914 (Russian Art until 1914) (1955) andSztuka
Słowian południowych {South Slaronic Art) (1962). Prof. Różycka attended these seminars
occasionally, as she later admitted in an article dedicated to her master. Ho\vever. this contact
must have been much more reguiar and intense sińce soon. in 1961, thus simultaneously with the
publication of a catalogue of Italian art, she defended at the Jagiellonian University her doctoral
dissertation entitled Bizantyńsko-ruskie malowidła ściernie w Kaplicy Swietokrzyskiej na Wawelu
1470 r. (Byzantine-Russian Murals in the Holy Cross Chapel on Wawel 1470). written under
the supervision of Prof. Mole. In private talks she freąuently, and always with great excitement,
emphasized his exceptional role in the choice of her academic career, whereas in her publications
she was extremely restrained in this respect. bringing to the fore Prof. Mole:s services to the
Polish history of art, particularly to Byzantine studies which, as she put it, ''he inaugurated as
a specialized university discipline". She showed more emotion in the very eloąuent conclusion
of her recollection: "In addition to achievements that can be expressed in facts and numbers,
there exists an indefmable sphere of influence wielded by outstanding personalities, which also
brings tangible effects. In the case of Prof. Mole this was an aura of dignity and authority which
surrounded him and was perceptible in his deportment and demeanour. Due to these ąualities, as
soon as you broke through this apparent barrier of reserve, you entered the circle of the sublime
knowledge of Art the experience and study of which gave meaning to his life".
It was undoubtedly under Prof. Mole's influence that she formulated the credo of her further
research in two successive publications: a paper on the frescoes at Castelseprio (1962) and her
doctoral dissertation published in Studia do dziejów Wawelu (vol. 3, 1968).
It is worth recalling here that she undertook these researches at the moment of deep internal
transformations of the history of art as a scholarly discipline and the ensuing polarization of
researchers' attitudes on two basie planes: the content of a work of art and its formal character-
istics. The first was influenced by Erwin Panofsky's new method of iconographic analysis and
synthesis, presented for the first time in 1930 in German in his study Hercules at the Crossroads,
which, however, was only popularized by later publications in English. The second was connected
with discarding the conventional system of linear. chronological classification of the so-called
historical styles in favour of the typology of individual features of the artistic language which
- due to European culture being deep-rooted in the tradition of Graeco-Roman antiquity - had
been reduced to the dichotomy between the classical and the non-classical style.
Prof. Różycka had the opportunity to see the frescoes in the smali church of Santa Maria
Foris Portas at Castelseprio near Milan during her stay in Italy in 1957 as a Ministry of Culture
and Art scholarship holder. This surviving fragment of the group of medieval murals, comprising
two zones of figural depictions on the apse wali and on the east side of the triumphal arch as
well as a seąuence of painted drapery beneath them. amazes by the freshness of antiąue forms;
exposed accidentally during military operations in 1944. it marks a breakthrough in researches
into the artistic heritage of classical antiąuity and its revival in the Middle Ages. At the same
time it is still the subject of an animated discussion on its dating and artistic origin, inaugurated
by Alberto de Capitani D'Arzago's publication in 1948. The majority of researchers linked them
with the art of the pre- and posticonoclastic periods ranging from the 7th to 9th centuries, and.
in accordance with the contemporary state of knowledge of the leading Mediterranean artistic
circles in that period, ascribed them to masters from Alexandria, Antioch or. generally. the
24