A szamosújvári örmény nagytemplom mellékoltárai
The Side Altars of the Armenian Parish Church in Gherla

Summary/Abstract: The four uniformly configured side altars that stand in the nave of the Armenian parish church of Gherla, and bear the characteristics of the transitional style between Baroque and Neoclassicism, are briefly mentioned in the previous scholarly literature, such as by the town’s monographer from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Kristóf Szongott, as well as by Margit B. Nagy, who summed up the oeuvre of Simon Hoffmayer. We are able to refine the altars’ building process and the exact separation of the masters’ involvement based on so far unresearched documents, namely the magistrates’ proceedings found in the Cluj County Direction of the National Archives of Romania, thus clarifying the role of Hoffmayer in the preparation of the altars at Gherla, while the documents in the Armenian Catholic Collective Archive in Gherla allowed for the identification of the altarpieces’ painter. Based on these we can ascertain that the altar retables were made between 1799 and 1804; the designs were created by Simon Hoffmayer, but because of his death, the execution was already undertaken by his assistant, the sculptor Antal Csűrös, while the altarpieces were painted by the Eger-born Viennese painter János Mihály Hesz between 1800 and 1804. Following the historical part, based on archival data, I considered it interesting to elaborate on the altars’ iconographic program, and on the analysis of individual paintings, since due to these certain characteristics of the Armenian cult of saints, respectively the advanced state of their integration in the Transylvanian cult of saints are also illustrated.

• Details
• Contents