On Saturday I went up to Szentendre, a little town on the Danube north of Budapest. (The name means St. Andrew). In the summer it is an artist's colony and tourist attraction; in winter it's rather sedate. There are a couple of little art museums here, including one devoted to Margit Kovács, a sculptor who drew on folk art and biblical themes (worth looking into if that sounds interesting). Szentendre used to be a primarily Serbian town--in the days when ethnicities were more mixed in Central and Eastern Europe. I was told that less than twenty Serbian families remain. But there are a number of Serbian churches, including this one, which had a museum of Serbian religious art and artifacts along with it. I was intrigued by the mix of styles--orthodox art plus the baroque architectural and decorative style that you can see in the portal above and in the extravagant details of the iconostasis below. For me this combination is completely novel, although maybe the art historians out there could tell me it is common in this part of the world. The icons are a bit unusual too, soft and pastel, something like the kitschy style you see on Catholic prayer cards, though still with their solid gold haloes.
Below are some more traditional icons. The one with the wings was marked as John the Baptist; based on several icons in the museum this seems to be a standard attribute. I like that his head is on a platter in the bottom left and thus shows up twice.
And then there are these images from the churchyard. A number of these stone plaques were affixed to the walls of the church and the masonry walls of the churchyard. The death's-heads reminded me of things you see on old New England Puritan headstones. It was very quiet and rather cold out here, lonely.
