Műtárgyvédelem, 2004 (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum)
Összefoglalók
Palazzo Stocchi-Isidori is getting deeper and deeper. Based on archives, we know the commissioning family, and could also gain a picture of the condition of the frescos at the end of the 19"’ century. The earliest written document related to the Palazzo Isidori dates back to 1871 and to the owner of the palace at the time Francesco Bassardini. From the purchase documents, we could learn that Karoly Pulszky saw the frescos in 1894 at their place of origine - on the walls, although fifteen of them were whitewashed. It was Pulszky who ordered the demounting of twenty-three frescos from the cane based plaster, as one was already taken off earlier. It was also Pulszky who ordered the transformation of the frescos to a copper wire net and the removal of the whitewash from the female figures. All this became clear from the payment documents a year later, in 1895, to Brigi Domenica, the restorer executing Pulszky’s orders. Within the iconographic identification of the allegories by Giovanni Previtali, we only amend his notes based on the latest research that the series also include Castitas (inv. nr. 1261) and Sapientia (inv. nr. 1262) and Prodigalita (inv. nr. 1363). After the restoration, the text earlier hardly legible on the allegory of Spes became more decipherable. Based on the iconography and the Latin and Italian texts accompanying the figures, it seems rather likely that the owners originally used the first floor room of the Palazzo Isidori, or a separated part of that room, as a chapel. Taken the purchase amount into account, we can state that Karoly Pulszky didn’t buy separate pictures in Peruggia in 1984 but the full fresco decoration of a medieval palace’s chapel, obviously with the aim to reconstruct the collection some way at its new home. CLAY WOUNDS Andrea del Verrochio - The Suffering Christ Ildikó Boros Ferenc Pulszky bought the terracotta statue of the suffering Christ, preserved to date in the Museum of Fine Arts, probably in Florence in the 1860’s. It is supposed to have been made by Andrea del Verrochio. In the World Expo in Vienna in 1873, it could still be seen between kneeling angels as the central element of a composition of three figures. After the World Expo all the three statues appeared to the art trade of Vienna and their future fate followed different routes. The Christ statue returned to Flungary in 1888, and it became an item of the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1924 (inv. nr.: 51.937). A photo from that time tells that there were already deficiencies on the fingers. In 1945 during the siege of Budapest, the head and the right arm broke off and fell to pieces. A restorer placed the statue on a base, glued it together and “thoroughly cleaned” it 153
