Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 32. (Budapest, 2018)
Miklós GÁLOS: An Antonio Tempesta Rediscovered in the Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest
above, some traces indicate that at one time it may have had such an ornament. Assuming the Viennese inventory entry described the Budapest picture, then—perhaps because it was broken—the work might never have been turned over. Given how cursory the description is, it is not hard to imagine that poor lighting caused the mother-of- pearl inlays to appear silver. Since the Jankovich collection had to be rejected as the provenance of the Museum of Fine Arts’ painting, the Viennese imperial collection thus arose as the possible source of this earlier discovered Tempesta. The 1773 inventory of the Viennese Schatzkammer describes an oval picture painted on stone, on which the Israelites’ Crossing of the Red Sea is depicted, in a gilt copper frame sparsely decorated with silver.61 According to the remark appended to the inventory, the picture broke and was thus discarded from the treasury.62 In May 1782, the discarded objects were given to Joseph Pipperger, assistant to the treasury; among them was a shattered painting on stone.63 The painting described in the Viennese inventory corresponds to the Museum of Fine Arts’ painting in terms of both subject matter and shape.64 Possibly, these stone fragments, at that time in private hands, wound up in the Hungarian National Museum, where they were later found by József Höllrigl. While, unfortunately, we have no earlier depictions of the picture found in the Museum of Applied Arts, we do have a 1948 negative image of the frame in the museum’s documentation department.65 (Fig. 14) Although no inlays can be seen in the photo, the frame appears to be more intact than it was when discovered in 2016. The smaller, more characteristic damages clearly 14. Museum of Applied Arts NLT 5535. Photo after an archival negative of the frame 23
