Szotyori-Nagy Ágnes (szerk.): A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 2013-2015 (Budapest, 2015)
Tanulmányok - Szőllősy Gábor: A szegedi Rákóczi-szobor lova
The horse of the eqestrian statue of Rákóczi at Szeged GÁBOR SZŐLLŐSY In 2012 the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture managed to purchase over fifty sketches from the legacy of the sculptor György Vastagh, junior. These included a measurement sketch taken of a Kladrubi stallion called Hanák. This horse showed a strong resemblance to the horse of the Rákóczi equestrian statue at Szeged, both in terms of its stature and the character of its head. This was the starting point for our research. According to the sculptor’s autobiography, this sketch indeed had been based on the model of the equestrain statue. The measurement sketch acquired by the museum provides a unique opportunity to examine if the artist remained true to the original proportions of the horse or whether he altered them. The sketch contains over 40 size data, but only 37 can be deciphered. Out of these 37 those 22 were compared to the dimensions of the statue that could be measured on the statue itself. Móra Ferenc Museum owns a 1:3 size plaster cast version of the statue, the dimensions of which (34 data) were also compared to the measurements featured on the sketch. The examination concluded that the artist had made extremely detailed and thourough preliminary studies before modelling the horse. Even when taking measurements he already had clear ideas of the future statue and noted dimensions accordingly. He regarded the size data featured on the sketch only as a general direction but not to be strictly adhered to. The most likely cause of the dimensional changes is probably the fact that the statue was placed on a 3 metre tall pedestal, which obviously changed the viewers’ perspective as opposed to a statue placed on ground level. The study also gives details of the creation of the statue and the Kladrubi breed itself as well. Kuruc lovasok, Georg Philip Rugendas metszete. A jobb oldali ló mozdulata nagyon hasonlít a szegedi Rákóczi-szobor lováéra 196
