The cabinets with drawers in the Print and Drawing Archives, which primarily hold original documents, also play a role as a part of the installations in our Heritage of the Centuries exhibition.
One of these documents is a pencil drawing that has been selected as the artwork of the month for September. It records the Yakovalı Hasan Paşa Mosque when it functioned as a chapel for the neighboring hospital, indicated by the crosses seen on the dome and the minaret. The historic rehabilitation work performed according to the plans of Károly Ferenczy (1959–1960) concentrated on the remodeling of the interior space. Due to this, the conditions recorded by Gyula Bayer are essentially the same as what can be seen today with the exception of the plastered façades, the window grates, and the fact that the crescent moons have been reinstalled replacing the crosses.
This pencil drawing is connected to several themes of the exhibition:
Free-hand drawings presenting the relationship between buildings and their environments were always important during historic property documentation. Numerous works of this kind were made during the survey projects led by Ernő Foerk over school breaks from the Upper Vocational School for Construction, and these aided the work of the National Historic Monuments Commission. Gyula Bayer made this drawing depicting the mosque in 1917 when he was a student.
The political events of the period also explain why Foerk focused on recording monuments from the Turkish period. The documentation of these relics and the registration of some of these buildings as protected gained great momentum after 1914. One of the considerations for this was because the Hungarian government wanted to convince the sultan Mehmed V to fight on the side of the Central Powers in the First World War through this gesture.
1. From Stone to Stone – Everything about Documentation
2. You and Us – Society and Historic Preservation
3. What Is a Historic Property? – The History of Protection
So, which section will Gyula Bayer’s drawing end up in?
Author: Gergely Károly Kovács
