Max Dvorák und die Revision der Mittelalter-Kunstgeschichte im ...

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Hans Aurenhammer Max Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art Figure 5 Dvořák Anfänge der christlichen Kunst Dvořák’s essay on The beginnings of Christian art, written in 1919, shortly before his death, was likewise based on this idea (fig. 5). 16 The second part on architecture was left unwritten, but can now be reconstructed quite well with the help of the lecture of 1917. At the time, in the margin of his manuscript (fig. 3), Dvořák sketched the rhythm of the axes of the columns and clerestory windows in the nave of a typical Early Christian basilica (e. g. fig. 6). He spoke of a ‘succession of vertical lines, which could continue on into infinity’. This ‘ideal upward striving’, he went on, represented ‘the outgrowth of the building, to which no apparent material limits are set, and which one senses more than one can scan them with the eye’. 17 The combination of passionate emphasis and terminological abstraction found in this lecture was typical of Dvořák’s style; here it served to transform the basilica into an allegory of Christian existence which transcends matter. It is a directly perceivable allegory: According to Dvořák, the basilica evokes a virtually psychagogical atmosphere. The beholder is transplanted into a ‘realm which is not of this world and in which there are no boundaries and all physical gravity seems to have been eliminated’. 18 The interior of 16 Max Dvořák, ‘Katakombenmalereien. Die Anfänge der christlichen Kunst’, in Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte. Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung, Munich 1923, pp. 1–40. 17 Dvořák, Geschichte der abendländischen Kunst im Mittelalter (1917/18)., pp. 306–308.. 18 Ibid., pp. 299, 281, 279–280.. 6
Hans Aurenhammer Max Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art the basilica – isolated, as it is, from the outside world – has its orientation towards the heights as well as towards spatial depth, while at the same time finding its point of rest in the apse. To borrow a poetical metaphor by Rilke, it becomes a Weltinnenraum, a ‘‘world interior’ of the human soul, experienced in the infinite space which is God. Naturally, that sounds very nebulous. It is to be pointed out, however, that Dvořák’s speculation always persists in a purely conceptual level of this kind – that is, it never claims a simple mimetic relationship in the manner of later interpretations of the Early Christian basilica as a ‘realistic’ reproduction of the celestial city by such scholars as Sedlmayr, Lothar Kitschelt or Alfred Stange. 19 Figure 6 Sant’Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, interior The later Dvořák’s spiritualistic interpretation of the Christian basilica was the consequence of a similarly astounding re-evaluation of the kind I described a little while ago in connection with catacomb painting. For Dvořák as well, the basilica was naturally constitutive for the overall development of Western sacred architecture, which he recounted – like Georg Dehio before him20 – as a major confrontation between the longitudinal and the centrally-oriented floor plan. All the more 19 Lothar Kitschelt, Die frühchristliche Basilika als Darstellung des himmlischen Jerusalem, Munich 1938. – Alfred Stange, Das frühchristliche Kirchengebäude als Bild des Himmels, Cologne 1950. – Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale, Zurich 1950 (Sedlmayr had formulated his thesis already in his inaugurational lecture at the University of Vienna on 5th november 1936. See Hans H. Aurenhammer, ‘Zäsur oder Kontinuität. Das Wiener Institut für Kunstgeschichte im Ständestaat und im Nationalsozialismus’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 53 [2004]), pp. 11–54; n. 78. 20 Georg Dehio, Die kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. 1884–1901. 7
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