Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 32. (Budapest, 2018)
Miklós GÁLOS: An Antonio Tempesta Rediscovered in the Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest
to this mistaken provenance information.53 In any case, the way in which the National Museum acquired, without inventorying, the Antonio Tempesta painting now in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts is at present unknown. That it once belonged to the Jankovich collection has now been indisputably refuted by the discovery of the Museum of Applied Art’s Tempesta painting. After all, the description in the Jankovich inventory, despite its brevity and the absence of measurements, corresponds to the features of the work in the Museum of Applied Arts: the subjects of the images on each side match those of the Jankovich picture, and the shape of the frame corresponds too. Once the grimy layer of varnish was removed, it also became clear that the extraordinarily thin stone sheet is indeed translucent. Jankovich described the support material as agate, although evidence from his inventory record book shows that he was familiar with lapis lazuli.54 Elsewhere, he mentions agate mixed with lapis lazuli, although this is a geological impossibility.55 For Jankovich, who had no expertise in geology, agate and lapis lazuli were apparently different types of the same precious stone. Perhaps he called the patterned stone rich in inclusions agate and the homogenous blue stone lapis lazuli.56 As this earliest, completely credible mention of the Museum of Applied Arts’ picture described the Garden of Eden scene as the front, we will also consider it to be the recto and the scene Crossing the Red Sea the verso. In the Barberini account book too, the depictions are mentioned in that order. In most cases, Jankovich’s inventories do not provide information on where works came from, and this is true for the Tempesta painting too. However, a picture perhaps identical to this may have circulated in the art market. In 1758, the Geistliche Schatzkammer in the Viennese imperial collection was reorganized, and on this occasion an inventory was also compiled.57 Item fourteen in the fourth cabinet was described as such: A large, broken, patterned lapis lazuli sheet with a painting of the Israelites’ Crossing the Red Sea, in an ebony frame with silver inlays, surmounted by a decoration with two angels also made of silver.>s In November 1778, Maria Theresa signed an acknowledgment stating she had taken several reliquaries and pretiosa objects from the Geistliche Schatzkammer. The above- mentioned broken lapis lazuli picture was among the objects removed from the treasury.59 The empress donated a portion of these works from the treasury, with some winding up in Hungary.60 It is tempting to identify the picture from the Viennese imperial treasury, described as a broken lapis lazuli sheet with a depiction of the Crossing of the Red Sea in an ebony frame, as the recently discovered work. Caution is warranted, however, as the description makes no mention of a depiction on the verso. The shape of the inlays missing from the Budapest frame and the analogy of the Di Castro picture both suggest the inlays were more likely made of mother of pearl than silver. Although the work was broken when it was discovered in the Museum of Applied Arts, earlier descriptions clearly referring to it make no mention of its damaged state. Furthermore, no angel decoration adorns the picture frame, although, as mentioned 22
