Anđela Horvat vis-à-vis Gjuro Szabo, Herman Bollé and Historicism – the Beginnings of the Recognition of the Art of the Second Half of the 19th Century in Croatian Art History

Abstract

Prilog govori o odnosu Anđele Horvat prema arhitekturi historicizma. U početku je gajila izuzetno negativan stav, da bi 1950-ih, među prvima u Hrvatskoj, prepoznala vrijednost ključnih spomenika 19. stoljeća.Anđela Horvat was one of the fi rst art historians in Croatia to start the study of significant artistic achievements of the second half of the 19th century. Despite her longterm and close collaboration with Gjuro Szabo – one of the fi erce critics of not only historicist restorations, but of almost every realization of that style – some of her papers published as early as the 1950s clearly point out the quality of certain 19thcentury interventions in Zagreb Cathedral and the church of St Mark. At the same time, her notes from numerous study trips throughout Croatia frequently included relevant historicist interventions on older buildings, but also some newer, historicist monuments which thus entered the fi eld of Croatian art history. Anđela Horvat played an important role in the reaffi rmation of the architectural and restoration oeuvre of Herman Bollé. The writings of Gjuro Szabo and Vladimir Lunaček, the unquestionable authorities of the time, but also of their followers, had left a profound trace in Croatian art-historical literature. As a consequence, Bollé’s work, with the exception of civil engineers, was received only with reprehension. In this sense, Anđela Horvat’s syntheses of the history of 19th-century architecture in Croatia in different encyclopaedic editions set the foundations for future research