DOI Artikel:
Smorąg Różycka, Małgorzata: Profesor Anna Różycka Bryzek (1928-2005)
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19072#0031
Syrian-Palestinian circle, who had sought refuge on the Italian Peninsula from the advancing
Arabs. Only Kurt Weitzmann and Andre Grabar discerned in them an expression of the medieval
renascence of classical traditions and dated the paintings to the 9th (Grabar) or 10,h (Weitzmann)
century. Prof. Różycka Bryzek joined them in 1962, this being all the more significant because
the view held by Grabar and Weitzmann, two academic authorities barely at an carly stage of
consolidating their standing in the circle of the students of Byzantine art, had been rejected flatly
by Victor N. Lazariev.
The paper on Castelseprio was presented by Prof. Różycka at the meeting of the team of
researchers of the State Art Institute in Cracow in 1958 and again, in 1961, during the meeting
of the Science of Art Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Thus, in addition
to introducing into Polish science the knowledge of one of the most important discoveries in the
history of medieval studies, she set the example of employing up-to-date research methods. at
that time only making their way in academic practice, preceding her disąuisition with a critical
review of previous methods which were still used by Polish researchers.
Kurt Weitzmann, elaborating on his earlier formulated thesis of the middl-Byzantine re-
nascence which he called the Macedonian renaissance, demonstrated stylistic affmities of the
freseoes at Castelseprio with the main works of that current in Byzantine art, above all, with the
miniatures of the Joshua Roli (Palat. gr. 431) and the Paris Psalter (Paris. gr. 139). Specifying
his view, Prof. Różycka proved that the Castelseprio freseoes, in terms of formal characteristics
close to the classicizing style of the Macedonian renaissance, were in fact a heterogeneous work
in which middl-Byzantine features were combined with Carolingian elements. It was on account
of their affinity with Carolingian illumination, especially with miniatures in the Utrecht Psalter
(Utrecht, Rijksuniversiteit, ras. 32), that she shifted their date to the early 9th century.
Furthermore, she discussed the Mariological programme of the freseoes at Castelseprio,
based on the apocryphal gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Protevangelium of St James, in the
context of the developing Marian doctrine in the Western Church, considering, for instance,
the decrees of the Lateran Council (649) in view of the contemporary revival of the heresies of
Nestorianism and Arianism in Spain, southern France, and Lombardy. Significantly enough, Prof.
Różycka's opinion on the date of the Castelseprio freseoes was to be corroborated only almost
half a century laterby the results of carbon-14 tests published in 1987 by Paula Leveto-Jabr and
by thermoluminescence dating in the same year by G. P. Brogiolo. At that time, too, Paula D.
Leveto resumed a study of the Mariological character of their iconographic programme, pointing
to their parallelism - in terms of content - to the writings of Ambrosius Autpertus (d. 778) and
next to the interpretation of Carolingian Mariology by Paul the Deacon and Alcuin.
However, more important than the above-mentioned meticulous specification were those
ąuestions in Prof. Różycka's paper on Castelseprio which concerned research methods in the
history of art and views on the role of the antiąue tradition in the development of the artistic
language of medieval art in the West and in Byzantium.
Considering the paintings at Castelseprio as a reflection of the ongoing doctrinal disputes,
she set the example of employing the methodological principle of analysing the content of
a work of art in the wider cultural perspective of a particular epoch - that is, the so-called third
piane of interpretation according to Panofsky - instead of viewing it merely in its function of
a derivative depiction of a text.
Going beyond the limits of traditional iconography understood as the identification of people
(as well as animals, plants, etc.) along with their attributes, symbols, and allegories, which had
already been called for by Aby Warburg, extended the rangę of the science of art, in the more
distant futurę leading to the restoration of an individual work of art to its artistic autonomy
expressed in the axiomatic dependence of the content of this work on its form. The conviction
25
Arabs. Only Kurt Weitzmann and Andre Grabar discerned in them an expression of the medieval
renascence of classical traditions and dated the paintings to the 9th (Grabar) or 10,h (Weitzmann)
century. Prof. Różycka Bryzek joined them in 1962, this being all the more significant because
the view held by Grabar and Weitzmann, two academic authorities barely at an carly stage of
consolidating their standing in the circle of the students of Byzantine art, had been rejected flatly
by Victor N. Lazariev.
The paper on Castelseprio was presented by Prof. Różycka at the meeting of the team of
researchers of the State Art Institute in Cracow in 1958 and again, in 1961, during the meeting
of the Science of Art Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Thus, in addition
to introducing into Polish science the knowledge of one of the most important discoveries in the
history of medieval studies, she set the example of employing up-to-date research methods. at
that time only making their way in academic practice, preceding her disąuisition with a critical
review of previous methods which were still used by Polish researchers.
Kurt Weitzmann, elaborating on his earlier formulated thesis of the middl-Byzantine re-
nascence which he called the Macedonian renaissance, demonstrated stylistic affmities of the
freseoes at Castelseprio with the main works of that current in Byzantine art, above all, with the
miniatures of the Joshua Roli (Palat. gr. 431) and the Paris Psalter (Paris. gr. 139). Specifying
his view, Prof. Różycka proved that the Castelseprio freseoes, in terms of formal characteristics
close to the classicizing style of the Macedonian renaissance, were in fact a heterogeneous work
in which middl-Byzantine features were combined with Carolingian elements. It was on account
of their affinity with Carolingian illumination, especially with miniatures in the Utrecht Psalter
(Utrecht, Rijksuniversiteit, ras. 32), that she shifted their date to the early 9th century.
Furthermore, she discussed the Mariological programme of the freseoes at Castelseprio,
based on the apocryphal gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Protevangelium of St James, in the
context of the developing Marian doctrine in the Western Church, considering, for instance,
the decrees of the Lateran Council (649) in view of the contemporary revival of the heresies of
Nestorianism and Arianism in Spain, southern France, and Lombardy. Significantly enough, Prof.
Różycka's opinion on the date of the Castelseprio freseoes was to be corroborated only almost
half a century laterby the results of carbon-14 tests published in 1987 by Paula Leveto-Jabr and
by thermoluminescence dating in the same year by G. P. Brogiolo. At that time, too, Paula D.
Leveto resumed a study of the Mariological character of their iconographic programme, pointing
to their parallelism - in terms of content - to the writings of Ambrosius Autpertus (d. 778) and
next to the interpretation of Carolingian Mariology by Paul the Deacon and Alcuin.
However, more important than the above-mentioned meticulous specification were those
ąuestions in Prof. Różycka's paper on Castelseprio which concerned research methods in the
history of art and views on the role of the antiąue tradition in the development of the artistic
language of medieval art in the West and in Byzantium.
Considering the paintings at Castelseprio as a reflection of the ongoing doctrinal disputes,
she set the example of employing the methodological principle of analysing the content of
a work of art in the wider cultural perspective of a particular epoch - that is, the so-called third
piane of interpretation according to Panofsky - instead of viewing it merely in its function of
a derivative depiction of a text.
Going beyond the limits of traditional iconography understood as the identification of people
(as well as animals, plants, etc.) along with their attributes, symbols, and allegories, which had
already been called for by Aby Warburg, extended the rangę of the science of art, in the more
distant futurę leading to the restoration of an individual work of art to its artistic autonomy
expressed in the axiomatic dependence of the content of this work on its form. The conviction
25