Hungarian Church Press, 1949 (1. évfolyam, 4-13. szám)

1949-08-26 / 10. szám

A HEW PICT DEE OP CALVIN IN HUNGARY

The ofiic-ial,. —of the Hungarian Reformed Church,-the "EeJhj^wStus Egyhás" writes; "Calxin has always- "been appreciated 'by the Hungarian Refoimed Christians with a particular love and deep sincerity. They accept the name Calvinist in a noble and modest self-consciousness, though they know it but too well that it was Calvin himself, who most definitely protested against his name, the name of a man being given to the true church of Christ. In our eyes Calvin is Cod’s great gift and servant, our teacher and paragon even to this day.

It is just because of our warm and attached .sentiments that, whenever we see the picture of Calvin, a kind of objection awakens in us. About 45 Calvin pictures have been left to us collected in the "Iconographie Calvinienne" by E, Doumergue, 1909,and in "Zwingli und Calvin" by Lang. Most of these pictures show Calvin as an aged, broken man. Therefore our instinct tells us not to believe that this self same Calvin, who as teacher and reformer and also as preacher of the huge St. Peter Church of Geneva working so intensely,could have been such a broken old man. Our faint but steadily growing suspicion is only strengthened by our observation, that the painters of the Calvin pictures left to us, were of poor talent. Every picture betrays the lack of drawing abilities and as an inevitable consequence the misdrawing went to the expense of the reality- of the picture-. But anyhow most of the pictures, contain one or two true features of Calvin.

Fortunately three very good Calvin pictures were al,»p left to us, whern^ it can be seen at once that they came out »of the hande/real artists. One of them is the Hanau Calvin picture, representing Calvin in his youth, the ot"hef is the so called pseudo-Holbein and the third is a René Boyvin etching.

Nov.' it meant an agreeable surprise that a well- * known Hungarian artist, Charles Luhnodorf, particularly famous for his splendid Christ- and Luther pictures, performed a splendid Calvin picture. Since many years his artistic creative mind was kept busy with the problem of a Calvin picture. Of all the. pictures left to us he chose the Boyvin picture as a basis and of the rest he adopted some features to be regarded as true. It all meant a painstaking long artistic study, but it resulted in a surprisingly beautiful and as far as we can judge in a really true Calvin picture.

. To this number of the Hungarian Church Press we enclose one of the new Hungarian Calvin pictures. They may be ordered tnrough our Publishing Office as well.

It is for vis a particular joy that the artist Charles Lühnsdorf» is a Hungarian Lutheran brother of ours.

This -?z~zpy fact shows that a spirit of Calvin is still alive in the big family of all the Protestant peoples of the world. The Hungarian artist tells us that while at work he often prayed like that; "Oh Lord, Thou knowest what Thy servant’s face looked like,guide my hands to depict him faithfully".

Dr. Gergely Budai professor of Theology