Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Tanulmányok / Studies - Imre Györgyi: A modell / The Model

ber of the Akademie der bildenden Künste of Vienna, besides several other foreign academic societies.

93 On the evidence of the deed of foundation the institute collected works that were connected to Hungary and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

94 Even in his programme of 1861 the director Ágoston Kubinyi talked of the principle of collecting with an encyclopaedic scope in sight

— something still waiting to be realised in part.

9

' At the completion of the Museum's new building the idea of founding a contemporary art gallery was also raised.

96 To the academic artist the knowledge amassed in the building became the new source of scientific truths related to the human body and with it self-awareness. The building that was opened in 1845 and constructed on the designs of Mihály Pollack fulfilled the modern functions of exhibitions of demonstration and perception: with the top-lit central Rotunda it not only displayed the Pantheon's spatial structure that formed a link between heaven and earth, universality and equality, but also followed the (imperial) tradition of Venetian studio architecture.

97 Academic and art institutes along with already existent associations were received into the museum.

98 In Jakab Marastoni's endeavour to interconnect the programme of his Royal Academy of Painting (1846-1859) with the institution of the National Museum we can recognise the French or rather Venetian model of an academy of fine arts forming strong bonds between the Museum that plays the role of a leading cultural institute.

99 Concurrently Ágoston Kubinyi was made vice-president of the Society for the Patronage of the Academy. Under Marastoni and Kubinyi's co-operation the Museum became the site of a new 'cult of artists' where their training was linked to art trade and to turning contemporary works into museum pieces.

100 (The students of Marastoni's school had their competitive works exhibited publicly every year by the Budapest Art Association that was engaged in contemporary art trade."") (Cat. V-17) This interconnection with Jakab Marastoni's painting academy was conveyed also architecturally in the fact that in 1846 József Hild developed in it a top-lit Venetian-style studio"

12 where 'the rays of light flooding through the gaps of the roof fitted with glass panels refracted dreamily on the white plaster statues'.

103 It was here

—among the plaster casts of classical statues and Canova's classicist works

—that academic figure and plaster-cast drawing was conducted.

104 (Cat. V-\6) At the same time Mihály Pollack's new building defined the framework for the future fine art of museums. This can be discerned more easily from the sheets of the Museum's 183 8 designs than the actual completed building. The Viennese Kupferstichkabinett

105 conserves the only complete copy of the museum's designs, among them the interior decoration and a sheet showing a mammoth's head hung up above the door that opens onto the paleontological collection from the Széchényi Library's corridor: room was made for the natural science collection and the picture gallery with the craftwork collection on the second floor.

106 (III. 10) All this demonstrated the evolutionist view of the time with regard to the descent of people, sciences and art.'

07 The decoration, however, was never realised

—with the exception of the tympanum

—on account of the lack of funds.

108 Pannónia, sitting on a throne amidst the allegorical figures of the frontal tympanum, and on either side of her the river gods of the Danube and the Drava

109 were all the country's topographical landmarks, while works on the peoples of the world were housed in the library. Within the museum the assembling of material on national ethnic groups was launched in the spirit of 'new humanism' with an encyclopaedic scope that was in keeping with a methodology spreading throughout Western Europe. James George Frazer in the preface to the second edition of his book The Golden Bough writes the following on this heroic age of European science: 'Just as the academics of the Renaissance found not only food for the mind among the dusty manuscripts of Greece and Rome but also an unexcavated field of work, in the mass of material flowing continuously from all parts of the world we too must see the new areas of knowledge, the possession of which demands the effort of numerous generations of scholars.""' European research and art engaged in the characterology of nations and the palaeontology of man proceeded equally from the museum. At the Institute of Natural History in Paris Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy de Sainte-Hilaire displayed the mounted remains of the body of Sarah Bartmann, the 'lost link', as the 'professional height' of their research that was conducted on the continuity of the descent of man."

1 (Cat. III-5) The idea of exhibiting this document humain was probably 'imported' from Vienna, where in 1796 Franz II, the 'fashioner of tradition', placed the anatomical preparation of Angelo Soliman in the Naturalienkabinett of the imperial court of Vienna. The well-educated Freemason Moor not only spoke several languages and was universally esteemed, but also fulfilled the position of private secretary to Counts Liechtenstein and Lobkowitz. His figure was put on display denuded and adorned with feathers, and surrounded by stuffed animals within an American landscape. In 1802, as a gift from the king of Naples, the anatomical preparation of an African girl was placed next to him for company

—despite the repeated appeals to the emperor by Soliman's daughter, Baroness Josepha von Feuchtersieben, in the interest of giving her father a decent burial. Finally at her request the Office of the Prince-Archbishop wrote a long letter to the court, emphasising the act of ignominy committed solely in order to delight the eye.

ul In Europe a host of natural scientists, adventurers and publishers engaged themselves with producing anthropological charts of the nations of the world or printing illustrated accounts of their experiences in publications such as Voyages en Afrique or Voyages autours du Monde.

u} Thus prints presenting the human races started on their journey, popularising certain pieces of scientific knowledge through the hypothetical hierarchy of phylogeny. When, following the example of the French Eugène Sue's Mystères de Paris, Ignác Nagy published his series of stories describing urban