Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 32. (Budapest, 2018)
Miklós GÁLOS: An Antonio Tempesta Rediscovered in the Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest
sance-style frame stained black with inlaid decoration, from which the inlays have fallen out. German, e[nd] of the 16th cfentury].43 While the description mentions the fragmentary state of the frame, the inventory record does not say that the picture was shattered. During the 1962 revisions of the collection, the work was removed from the records.44 We can easily imagine this step was taken because the picture had been damaged. Street fighting during the 1956 uprising resulted in serious damage to the Museum of Applied Arts and its collection. A significant portion of the works deleted from the inventory in the first revision after the uprising were those that had been lost as a result of the turmoil.45 Yet, the list of deleted items does not contain any remarks about the damage done to the picture. The archival file lists whereabouts unknown as the reason for the deletion. Thus, at present, we cannot answer the question of when the picture became so badly damaged that it was nearly beyond repair, nor can we determine under what circumstances the primitive additions were made. According to the inventory record, the picture was a ‘transfer from the historical collection’—that is, it was moved from the National Museum to the Museum of Applied Arts in 1944, thus from the same museum where József Höllrigl had discovered the other Tempesta work in Budapest. At the time of the transfer, the original inventory numbers were not recorded; even today, a lot of work still needs to be done identifying transferred objects based on the National Museum’s former inventory entries. In determining the provenance, the other Tempesta work in Budapest, now in the Museum of Fine Arts again provided enlightening input. Höllrigl was curious about how the broken stone picture he discovered had arrived in the National Museum.46 The painting had no inventory number and did not appear in the museum’s first printed catalogue, published in 1825,47 nor did it appear in the collection development records begun in 1846. While it was conceivable the fragments were never inventoried, Höllrigl posed another possibility: the picture might be identical to the first item of the inventory book containing the paintings, statues, ivory and stone works of the Jankóvich collection, purchased in 183648: Rectangular, translucent picture, painted on agate, 16th-century Italian work, which displays the Garden of Eden on one side and the Pharaoh’s Crossing the Red Sea on the other.49 The date, the school of painting and one of the depictions fit with the work discovered by Höllrigl, but the translucent agate support painted on both sides does not, as the Höllrigl work was painted on only one side, on red breccia. Therefore, Höllrigl himself was cautious about his own his supposition. Ágnes Czobor was far more bold, stating confidently that the work, which had in the meantime been transferred to the Museum of Fine Arts, was indeed from the Jankovich collection.50 She attempted to resolve the contradiction posed by the Jankovich inventory’s description of a two-sided picture by saying that the verso of the work discovered by Höllrigl was covered by another sheet and was thus not visible.51 Her solution is strange since Höllrigl’s publication, which Czobor refers to several times, presents a photo of the unpainted reverse.52 Ever since, the literature has regularly referred 21
