Róka Enikő szerk.: Zichy Mihály, a „rajzoló fejedelem” (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2007/4)

Egy romantikus allegória • Zichy Mihály „főművének" inspirálói LICHNER MAGDOLNA

Divina Comedia, and Milton's religious epic, Paradise Lost. This was a period when illustrated editions of picaresque novels, or the works of Cervantes, Rabelais with mannerist character following the traditions of tales of chivalry as well as of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso were published in extremely high number of copies at the time. Mihály Zichy and Gustave Doré were two upstarts in the world of academic painting and, as such, can be regarded as two pioneering philantropists in the history of democratization and popularization of art. However, both of them were often criticised in a negative way for their seeking popularity and vulgarization of art. Terribilità, the means of depicting horrifyingly majestic, bewilderingly solemn as well as escatological themes, including oximoron, a rhetoric-poetic combination of extreme antitheses triggerred by the revival of Michelangelo's esteem in late eighteenth century German and English theory of art, were overwhelmingly gaining ground in the field of popular romanticism. Notwithstanding Zichy's intention of creating grand and solemn paintings along the lines of academic expectations, its legacy does make these paintings look somewhat vulgar for modern viewers, and certainly were vulgar for some contemporaries, thereby probably giving reasons for heated aesthetic and interpretational debates then and now. He inherited from the previous images of Last Judgement the pictorial treatment, the colours, the topi of motion, including the pathos formulae, which were meant to increase tragic effects and expressiveness. However, all these have by now been worn out by a plethora of wide screen mystic horror and its solemnity has been degraded by American war films aimed at creating and maintaining patriotic emotions. The roots of this well-known imagery of our days are very deep. The etimology of Satan's name, Lucifer, or the fallen angel, 'the Demon of Hell', 'the devil's brood' lead us quite far. The Bible does not give an explanation for the Devil, or for the origin of the Devil's people. It Is St Augustine's De civitate Dei that guides us through the labyrinths of the sequences of apocryphal stories of the Creation and of the canonized ones of the Salvation. Of the heavenly city St Augustine was the first to mention the story of the rebellious angel and his deposition by God, that is, the downfall of Lucifer as well as of his followers. The subject of the fall of angels and the scepticism of the perfection of the Lord's creation, including the theological debate on the existence of original sin and of free will, as indeed the visualization of The Tempter with bat's wings and stag hooves in the interpretation of the world order by farces, do tend to constitute a cross-section of European culture. In various divisions of Hell the horrible punishments meted out for abstract sins are rendered in medieval coarseness in Dante's Divina comedia, yet his faith is unquestionable. However, as far as we are concerned, the literary line takes its momentum with Marlowe's Faust. Milton and his contemporary, Bunyan, are offering us a universal vision of the lost and newly found faith as well as of right life and free will. In addition to the reserved criticism of enlightenment Goethe's Faust is giving an example of the comic character of the painfully short duration of human knowledge and love, including the latter's intimate beauty. Finally Byron bequethed the aestheticism of a sinner's cosmic struggle to Europe which had lost faith, but was still hungry for heroic tales and a safe interpretation of universal order. The assertion of national literature and art was mainly facilitated by education and printing. Exhibitions, however, created an opportunity for comparisons as well as the means of becoming familiar with different cultures. Zichy's paintings were made for the masses visiting world exhibitions and, according to his intention, his composition represented not only his personal talent, but the art of his home country as well. This certainly explains for his choice of expression. By the second half of the 19th century faith in progress and the optimism of the age of enlightenment had vanished, and despite the fact that in the world exhibitions rising nation states were competing with their scientific results, industrial performances, including their arts, some kind 'cultural pessimism' could be felt in Europe in the 1870s. This is reflected in the work of Mihály Zichy, The Triumph of the Genius of Destruction, (fig. 39.)