Buzási Enikő szerk.: In Europe' Princely Courts, Ádám Mányoki, Actors and venues of a portraitist's career (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2003/1)
Enikő Buzási: ÁDÁM MÁNYOKI (1673-1757) Conclusions from a Monograph
(probably posthumous) representation of Balthasar Permoser of 1742, showing the sculptor as a pensive old sage, similarly to Salomon Koninck's old scholars. Another is the portrait of Count G otter in a turban, exemplifying another kind of historicism, the more direct appearance of his experience of Rembrandt, possibly inspired by Pesne's works in Rembrandt's style, which had entered the Dresden collection earlier (cat. no. 87). Out of the genres in historical costumes rendered in "Dutch manner," which the sources claim to have been numerous among his old-age works, only one is known: the representation of an old man from the Old Testament painted in the early 1750s. It is one of his last works, as its provenance suggests (cat. no. 90). The most important evaluation of Mányoki's artistic achievement by a contemporary came from Hagedorn, already mentioned as his biographer, who was an ardent connoisseur and collector of his pictures. Among the 18 th-century German private collections, Hagedorn's contained the most, high quality works by Mányoki. The sixteen pictures probably date mainly from the little represented years of 1742-1745. 27 Hagedorn counted Mányoki among the most outstanding portraitists of his Attributed to Ádám Mányoki: Maria Amália Christine, princess of Saxony, Queen of Sicily (later of Spain), 1737/38 Slovenské národné múzeum, Múzeum Cerveny Kamen (cat. no. 84) time, listing him after Martin van Meytens and Pesne, from whom he not only collected but also ordered pictures. 28 Only the surviving list of pictures reveals Hagedorn's collection of Mányoki's works, since the collection was devoured by fire in an insurance fraud schemed by his heir in 1806. 29 The investigation that followed found some pictures intact including Mányoki's portrait of Hagedorn, painted upon the collector's request in the manner of Frans van Mieris in 1742. The picture cropped up in an auction in 1819, but has been unheard of ever since. The only extant piece of the collection is Dominicus van der Smissen's portrait of Friedrich Hagedorn, the collector's brother. It is in Hamburg's Kunsthalle today. Most pictures painted for Hagedorn were historicising and rococo character heads. With one exception, these included the "four seasons" series always mentioned with heated emotions by the collector, and the female character heads called Frauenzimmerbilder, which in Hagedorn's account were the epitomes of the painter's technical mastery. The single Mányoki work actually known from the Hagedorn collection, a female figure wearing a veil, which survives in Christian Daniel Rockstroh's engraving, belongs to the type of Rococo character heads which are represented by a single known Mányoki portrait showing a girl softly modelled, dated 1744, in the Museum of Schwerin. The picture displays the influence of Rosalba Carriera's pastels, many variants of which were included around that time in the Dresden collection. With its gentle painterly solutions and its kindly appeal, typical of the genre, it was a direct precedent to the Swihowska portrait of 1747, a fine and mature late work of Mányoki's Rococo period (cat. no. 88). Finally, it gives a fuller insight into Mányoki's career and artistic disposition to know more about his personality. What little we know of him comes from Hagedorn's relatively one-sided account. The undoubtedly authentic but meagre knowledge one acquires from him is not only complemented but also considerably modified by the library and manuscript material recorded in the painter's estate upon his death. 30 Earlier sources gave no indication of his interests beyond art, hence the composition of Mányoki's book stock with its mere two art theoretical works reveals utterly new aspects of Mányoki's spiritual background and character of erudition. His library and manuscripts, most of them perhaps by his hand, reveal that he had deep knowledge and extensive interest in various branches, primarily medicine and medical chemistry, as well as alchemy and other "magic sciences." The stock of 237 books and 26 manuscripts is above the contemporary average in quantity as well, if one considers the 86 books owned by Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, Dresden architect, and 394 books in the estate of affluent and erudite court goldsmith Georg Christoph Dinglinger. 31 The inventory of the estate includes a large number and variety of
