Kornél Divald

* Eperjes, 21 May 1872 – † Budapest, 24 March 1931 / art historian, museologist, art critic, photographer, corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences ; ; Károly Divald (1830–1897) was the son of a pharmacist and photographer (Selmecbánya). He was fond of photography and travelling as a child and often accompanied his father to the Tatra Mountains. He graduated from the Catholic High School in Eperjes. In 1890 he enrolled in the medical faculty of the University of Budapest, but the following year, due to a trip to Rome, his interest turned definitively towards art history and from 1891 he continued his studies at the Faculty of Humanities, but due to a hereditary auditory nerve disease that led to complete deafness, he was forced to drop out of university and continued his education as an autodidact. He married Ilona Dobránszky, the daughter of a landowner from Prešov, and they had two sons: György Divald, a railway engineer, and Kornél Divald Jr., a doctor. He gained a reputation as an art critic by saving the antiques, art treasures, and artifacts of the former Upland and transporting them to museums, as well as by documenting them with photographs. He fondly called himself an “art history detective,” and in the memory of posterity he will live on as the “Carrier of Saints.” In 1911 he became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He published his professional articles and books under his own name, and his works of fiction under the pseudonym György Tarczai. ; ; His main works: ; Memories of Upper Hungary’s Renaissance Architecture, 1900, ; The Art of Old Buda and Pest in the Middle Ages, 1901, ; The Castle of Sárospatak, 1902, ; The Art of Budapest Before the Turkish Occupation, 1903, ; Artistic Monuments of Szepes County I-III., 1905–1907, ; Winged Altars of Hungary from the High Arch Period I-II., 1909–1911, ; Upland Walks, 1926, ; Artistic Monuments of Hungary (also in English), 1927, History of Hungarian Applied Arts, 1929.