Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 24. (Budapest, 2006)
Magdolna LICHNER: The reception of electroplates in Hungary I. - Electroplates in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts 1873-1884
Dickens's writings. Doré's religiousness was a part of a Christian-social tendency, which did not fit into the church's official system of thoughts; with some exaggeration, it may be called a 19 lh-century phenomenon of philantrophy or, rather, a modem exegesis of Biblical stories, metaphors and analogies. In several European countries, "cultural pessimism" evoked a religious reaction." Most probably, this served as a spiritual background of the order of the 'Pilgrim' Shield. The pair of works, produced by the Elkington Company on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the first edition of The Pilgrim's Progress, was an attempt to repeat the success of 1867. In June 1874, Alfred Elkington raised the subject in a letter written to the master, who at that time stayed in Vichy. 58 Morel-Ladeuil adopted the main figure and the character of the central scene of the Bunyan Shield partly from the small sculptures of his master, Fenchère and partly from the description he found in the allegorical novel. Unlike in the case of the Milton Shield, he considered himself the maker and the designer of the shield: 'invenit et fecit MorelLadeuil'. The main figures of the scene is 'the angel of depth' (The Book of Revelation, 9, 11), Apollion (Greek 'destroyer') and the Christian. They fight a battle in the Valley of Humiliation; finally, the pilgrim defeats the angel. (Picture 10.) The figure of the dragon and the bat-winged Satan owes its popularity to the bronze statuettes made by Fenchère, a French Romanticist sculptor (Pictures from vases with devil figures in the Louvre; the figure of the thinking Devil). 51 ' In my opinion, the main figure of Zichy 's famous work (The Demon of Destruction or the Spirit of Devastation, 1878) was composed on the model of the central scene of the shield; its allegorical depiction imitates the Satan's figure on the Bunyan shield, in terms of both form and spirit. It is by no means an accident that Zichy, when expressing his 'political' views, adopted the motif from Morel-Ladeuil's Bunyan Shield. (Picture 11-12.) In Bunyan's novel, the Pilgrim fights the Evil and thus his morals are refined, while Zichy 's protagonist succumbs to the Spirit of Devastation. Still, the didactic character of the scene is to be traced back to the very same source. Morel-Ladeuil's characteristic Romantic allegories are the personified Industry, Trade, Poetry, Tragedy and, last but not least, Imagination. The representative and overtly political laudatory works that he produced for Napoleon III and the French aristocrats and the pieces he produced for the Elkington Company to win over the royal couple, along with their reproductions, are closely related to Zichy 's notion painting. Zichy paid attention to social Utopias, while Doré embraced a Christian version of the same idea; anti-church attitude is a common feature of theirs. The picture Zichy painted for the 1878 Paris world exhibition is a large-scale allegory; among others, it makes references to the Prussian-French war, the Paris Commune, assesses the militant powers and proclaims the manifesto of pessimism. In a letter (1898) he wrote that his intention was to follow the footsteps of Doré. 60 Gustav Doré, the French graphic artist achieved his greatest successes in England, Morel-Ladeuil, whose works were exhibited in the Paris Salon was employed by the Elkington Company and Mihály Zichy, the Hungarian painter felt at home in Paris. All of them gave a visual representation of literary cults. As for Károly Pulszky and Jenő Radisics, their intellectual background lacked this aspect; perhaps this is why they did not appreciate MorelLadeuil's personal achievements. That is, for them, the 'aura' of the works did not exist. Thus, the shields are cult artefacts from several points of view. The basis is the eulogy of the famous shield in the Odyssey. The fact that Achilles is the hero of the ancient epic may lead us to make associations concerning the English national epic. The hero's armour can be interpreted on a literal and a figurative level - this is where the association concerning Saint George, the warrior of the faith, lies. (Picture 9.) By the way, his figure is depicted on the Milton Shield. For Milton, Goethe, Madách and, in a more popular way, Bunyan, the universal fight, the issue of faith and doubt, of the meaning of human existence is a major problem, albeit in
