An interview with Gergely Buzás, archaeologist and art historian, Director of the King Matthias Museum at the Hungarian National Museum

Even as a child, he was committed not only to his profession but also to the Middle Ages. He became an archaeologist in Visegrád, and it was here that he went on to become director of the institution which was not only his alma mater but, to this day, still feels a little like home. We spoke to Gergely Buzás. 

What has been the academic response to the sensational find at Visegrád?

Everything we have now discovered in Visegrád has been widely reported on the radio, on television channels and online. Both the Castle Captain’s Office and the Hungarian National Museum endeavoured to provide the press with as much detail as possible about the results of the excavation. This is undoubtedly one of the finds in Visegrád that has attracted the most attention in recent years, but there is much more to it than that.

If we look at, say, the last fifty years, can we cite any similarly significant find by way of comparison?

In fact, one could say that a discovery of comparable significance comes to light in Visegrád once every hundred years. The Hercules Well was discovered around 1940, whilst the discovery of the Visegrád Madonna in the 1830s was considered an archaeological sensation of similar magnitude. This does not, of course, mean that no other exciting and important finds have come to light during the excavations. In the 1960s, the reconstruction project led by Miklós Héjj and Ernő Szakál, concerning the Gothic ornamental fountains of Visegrád, was also of international significance. This latest discovery therefore stands out amongst these major achievements.

What new insights does this latest discovery offer us?

We knew that the Franciscan monastery was closely linked to the royal palace, but we hadn’t realised that the building would be of such high quality. The altar for the church was brought from Florence, just as was the furnishings for the palace chapel. We knew that Benedetto da Maiano had worked for King Matthias; there is even a written record of this: a charter from 1493 refers to an earlier royal commission that remained unfinished. Now, however, it is possible that we have found the work itself. In any case, it is certain that one of the most significant Italian marble sculptors of the era had a previously undiscovered work in Hungary, which once stood in Visegrád.

The discovery of the church’s remains is therefore significant even by international standards.

That is absolutely correct. As soon as the fragments were unearthed, the first thing I did was to seek the expert opinion of an Italian colleague, who is the foremost expert on the period. Artworks dating from the early Renaissance period are found outside Italy exclusively in Hungary, from the court of Matthias; so whatever we discover here immediately attracts the attention of Italian researchers, and of course everyone else in the world whose specialism is this period of art history. It was not until the early 16th century that similar works began to appear in other regions of Europe; therefore, anyone interested in the art of the Italian Quattrocento should also turn their attention to Buda and Visegrád, as well as Italy.

To what extent did this Renaissance influence take hold in Hungary during the reign of Matthias?

It could be said that, apart from the court, only a few high-ranking clergy adopted the new style, but even they were largely limited to employing second- or third-tier Italian artists. Benedetto da Maiano’s work is a particularly significant discovery because, whilst written records do mention that Matthias commissioned works from leading Florentine artists, everything that has survived to this day tends to represent the second tier (e.g. the works of Giovanni Dalmata or Gregorio di Lorenzo). We cannot, therefore, claim at all that the Early Renaissance had become widespread in Hungary during Matthias’s reign; on the contrary, it now seems increasingly certain that Matthias was a regular patron of leading Italian artists as well.

What led you to choose this rather unusual profession back then? How did Gergely Buzás become an archaeologist?

Even as a small child, I was captivated by chivalric romances, castles and Gothic cathedrals. I knew as early as my first year at secondary school that I would become an archaeologist. I took up art history as a second subject at university. In the archaeology department, my professors were András Kubinyi, a leading expert on the reigns of Matthias and the Jagiellonian dynasty, whilst in the art history department they were Ernő Marosi and Sándor Tóth. Although I did not complete my degree in history – as by then I was focusing exclusively on the Middle Ages and did not wish to spend time on the modern era – I was still able to learn from such outstanding scholars as László Solymosi, Erik Fügedi and Jenő Szűcs. It is to all of them that I owe the interdisciplinary approach that is indispensable to medieval studies.

Which was your first major, unforgettable excavation?

Whilst still at secondary school, I worked alongside archaeologist Gábor Kárpáti on the excavation of the Pauline monastery on Jakab Hill, near Pécs. I was born in Pécs, and my grandparents lived at the foot of Jakab-hegy, in Kővágószőlős. One of my formative childhood experiences was collecting medieval pottery shards in the vegetable patch, which my grandfather and I would then take to the museum. We went on lots of excursions in the area, and I saw the ruins, which really captured my imagination. I got involved in the work as an excavation labourer whilst still a young secondary school pupil, and my enthusiasm has remained undiminished ever since.

For an archaeologist specialising in the Middle Ages, Visegrád is bound to be a must-visit destination sooner or later.

As a first-year university student, I had a female fellow student a year above me with whom I attended art history lectures. She knew what interested me, and when Mátyás Szőke visited András Kubinyi, the then new director of the Visegrád Museum, who was looking for a young person willing to work on the carved stones of Visegrád Palace, my fellow student recommended that I seize the opportunity, and I was only too happy to take on the task. After the first Kubinyi exam in January, I made the pilgrimage to Visegrád in the bitter cold. Mátyás Szőke led me out into the courtyard, where there was a snow-covered pile of stones, and said: – Dear Gergely! If you carry this out over the next five years, you’ll become an archaeologist. I decided that it looked quite exciting, so that’s actually how I became an archaeologist and that’s why I’ve stayed here in Visegrád.

And at the same time, did he also progress step by step through the various academic posts at the university?

No, I started working at the museum straight away. In fact, I began as a storekeeper whilst I was still a university student. I was never officially employed by the university. After graduating in 1989, Professor Kubinyi asked me to stay on at the department as a lecturer and teach the history of medieval architecture to the students. So, although I did teach, my main job was at the museum. Nevertheless, I taught for 26 years, successively at all four universities in Hungary that had an archaeology department, but I never secured a permanent post at any of them. Then, in 2016, I gave up all forms of teaching because the excavations had taken off to such an extent that I simply no longer had time for university. That was when major projects such as the excavation of Eger Castle came along.

Then there’s the 3D reconstruction. We can see many of his works and contributions in this field, both online and at exhibitions…

I spent a lot of time working on an excavation in France in the 1990s. It was there that I first saw a digital reconstruction of this kind. The reconstruction of the third church at Cluny Abbey was carried out by the IBM His team worked in collaboration with French art historians. This was a huge innovation at the time – perhaps the first virtual reconstruction on such a large scale. As I am primarily interested in architecture and architectural reconstructions within the medieval period, this new opportunity really caught my attention. I’d been sketching building reconstructions as a hobby since my secondary school days, and later, as an archaeologist, I continued this as a scientific tool. By the early 2000s, the time had come when virtual 3D drawing no longer required IT skills, as the first user-friendly CAD software for architects had been developed. The project mentioned in connection with Cluny Abbey was originally carried out by an entire department at IBM, but with the new software, architects and archaeologists were also able to work on it – provided, of course, they had some knowledge of CAD.
My first project was on the abbey church in Szekszárd; I carried out the reconstruction of the church and its vault. This was followed by the reconstruction of the church at the Ellés Monastery in Csongrád. It was then that I switched to the software I still use today.

In 2008, the Year of the Renaissance was announced to mark the anniversary of King Matthias; it was then that the Narmer Architectural Studio its director, Zsolt Vasáros, who was an architect with similar interests to mine. He invited me to collaborate on a major project, the aim of which was to showcase the most important works of the Hungarian Renaissance in a virtual space. The result of our collaboration was the National Museum’s temporary exhibition entitled ‘Renaissance Visual Gallery’ and the accompanying book. Since 2010, I have primarily been working on the Pazirik IT Ltd.I work with [company name]; they specialise specifically in archaeological reconstructions. I build the virtual 3D model, and then they apply realistic textures to it, model the surroundings, create animations from it or, where appropriate, print it out in 3D. Apart from me, there are only about three or four other humanities specialists (archaeologists, art historians, architectural historians) in Hungary today who still carry out digital 3D building reconstructions on a serious professional basis. We very often work together with them on larger projects. I must admit, it does take a certain kind of madness to do this; it’s not something you’d normally expect from an archaeologist. For me, it’s also a hobby. But above all, 3D reconstruction is a very important research tool for me. Someone once put it this way: we can only truly understand a building if we systematically dismantle it. In fact, we also come to understand it when we reconstruct it, even if only virtually.

Excavations, museum tours, putting together exhibitions, and then, to wind down, a bit of digital reconstruction…

That way, you certainly won’t get bored. If you find yourself getting a bit fed up with one thing, you just need to head out into the field, or open another project folder on your computer, where something completely different is waiting for you.

It is not often that a researcher from the humanities to delve so deeply into the world of computer science, and although many of us were enthusiastic about the wonderful methods of Iván Horváth in the field of computer science bibliography, the norm is rather to keep a safe distance from the 230 volts.

My generation grew up alongside digital technology. I actually typed my thesis on a typewriter and drew the diagrams on tracing paper. I was already working as a museologist when I bought my first computer, using the money I’d received for the publication of my thesis. Innovations that were considered revolutionary at the time – such as word processing and desktop publishing programmes, as well as digital drawing and image-processing software, which now seem entirely commonplace – made the work of a researcher or archaeologist so much easier that it is difficult to put into words. Compared to these, digital 3D drawing programmes are an order of magnitude more helpful. At university, I taught archaeology students how to produce digital reconstruction drawings, but I myself had no one to teach me this. I had to figure it out for myself, right there and then. Using the few tools available, I eventually managed, for example, to visualise a net vault on a computer screen. So the work always paid off, but it took a great deal of energy and perseverance, and, of course, the ability to cope with setbacks.

Do archaeology students learn about 3D reconstruction these days?

I have relatively little information about the past eight years as far as training programmes are concerned, but when the Department of Archaeology was established at Pázmány Péter University, we specifically included the teaching of 3D reconstruction as part of the curriculum. I fear there is still room for improvement in this area of education, but young people are now far more confident in using these tools than my colleagues were in the early days of digitalisation. Nowadays, archaeological research is no longer a one-man enterprise, but a team effort involving many experts, of which 3D reconstruction is a part. To achieve a perfect result, several disciplines must work together (in our case, digital graphics, computer science, archaeology and art history), and the outcome of such a collaboration can only be truly accurate if we strive for authenticity and quality. And that is the only way worth doing it.

By the time this article is published, you’ll already be working on another excavation in the Balaton Uplands, 150 km from Visegrád. Could you tell us a bit about that too?

I’d be delighted to, because this is a wonderful excavation taking place in Monostorapáti. We are excavating a monastery dating from the Árpád era. The work has been ongoing since 2014. The local community, in collaboration with the parish priest and a museologist from Tapolca, László Hangodi, initiated the excavation, as it was possible to determine exactly where this monastery once stood on the basis of documentary evidence and a surviving wall fragment. They asked if I would be willing to lead the excavation, and I was delighted to accept. So we began the work on behalf of the King Matthias Museum of the Hungarian National Museum, in collaboration with the museum in Veszprém. This is an entirely voluntary project: here, local residents are working alongside other volunteers who have travelled from afar, as well as students, archaeologists and other specialists. Only those who are committed to the excavation work out there, so every moment of this work is wonderful. And the location is beautiful, in the middle of a forest, next to clear-water springs.

This was a monastery built between 1117 and 1121, which belonged to the Atyusz clan. A beautiful Romanesque church, with exquisite marble carvings, just like those now found in Visegrád, only these date from the 13th century. We also found some very fine metal objects with the help of our colleagues using metal detectors, including book clasps and a rich collection of coins. In 2022, we also excavated the graves of the monastery’s medieval patron families. A team of anthropologists and archaeogeneticists also helped us analyse these finds. Thanks to this, we were able to identify the deceased by name.

The local community’s attachment to this place is deeply moving. At their request, we solemnly reburied the human remains that had been unearthed in the parish church at Monostorapáti, in an ornate sarcophagus made especially for this purpose. The village’s inhabitants form an indigenous community whose ancestors have lived here for centuries. This is all the more interesting because, during the Ottoman period, a large proportion of Hungarian settlements were depopulated, and it was only after a long „interval” that new settlers arrived, finding nothing but the ruins of villages ravaged by the Ottomans; so they had no connection – nor could they have had any – with the people who had lived here long ago. Only a few settlements form an exception. Monostorapáti is one such place, as is my own village, Kővágószőlős in the Mecsek Hills, where my ancestors lived for centuries, beneath the ruins of the monastery on Jakab Hill. Perhaps this is why Monostorapáti and its ancient abbey are so close to my heart – because they remind me of my own little corner of the world.

I wish the excavation that has begun in Monostorapáti every success, just as the previous ones have enjoyed, and thank you very much for giving us a closer look at the day-to-day aspects of your work following our conversation, and for allowing us a little glimpse behind the scenes.

2024. 07. 03.