Mikó Árpád – Verő Mária - Jávor Anna szerk.: Mátyás király öröksége, Késő reneszánsz művészet Magyarországon (16–17. század) 2. kötet (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/4)
The English Summary of Volumes I—II
The method developed Jozef Medvecky to demonstrate the use of European Late Renaissance and Early Baroque engravings by a large number of painters working in Upper Hungary in the 17 th century has been highly productive in learning about the art of the area in the last decade and a half. To continue the work, it may be useful to study the phenomenon via painters known by name. One potential example is the Kassa painter Ellinger Caspar (Kassa citizen 1616; died 1622), whose legacy included "Illuminierbuch Valentini Bolzer, ein schlecht Malerbuch, Icônes novi testamenti". The much-used painting book (ein schlecht Malerbuch) cannot be identified, but the other two can. The "Illuminierbuch Valentini Bolzer" refers to the several-times published Illuminierbuch of Valentin Boltz (d. 1560), Swiss Evangelical minister, dramatist and translator. The second engraving illustrated book owned by the Kassa painter, the Icones novi testamenti, contained woodcuts by Jost Amman (1564, 1574, 1583, Frankfurt). Did the pictures which the painters in Hungary used influence their self-image? As well as being a useful source of compositions, engravings by famous European painters were the means by which local painters acquired reputation and market success. The starting point for the investigation is a Selmecbánya (Banská Stiavnica) painting which once hung in the council chamber of the Town Hall, now the Mining Museum. The double composition of the large (186 x 238 cm) picture, divided into two, consists of a convocation of Olympian gods on the upper, larger section and a distant view of Selmecbánya underneath (figure 52). The two are connected by a painted scroll on which the fragmentary German and Latin text is now illegible. The top, figurative image is a copy of an engraving of the Allegory of the Arts by Federico Zuccari (1571), made by Cornelis Cort between 1572 and 78 (figure 53). In the top part of composition, the nine muses are pleading with Jupiter to accept Painting among their number. The allegory concerns the struggle of artists considered as artisans to have their art recognised as the work of the mind. The painter of the Selmecbánya picture faithfully copied the upper part of the composition from the engraving, but left out the lower part and put in its place the view of Selmecbánya (figure 54). The choice of the engraving shows that the idea for the painting came from someone with a high degree of artistic sophistication. The identities of paintings and sculptors rarely appear in sources for 17 th century Hungarian painting. The change in Hungary only came in the 1740s, when graduates of the Vienna academy, such as Paul Troger, Georg Raphael Donner, Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Joseph Ressler, Stephan Dorffmeister and others started to sign their works regularly. The distinguishing status of artist became one of the principal factors in pursuing a career. In the 17 th century, however, artists in Hungary had other ways of promoting their interests. The craftsman status, rather than something to be surpassed, was the best position — together with the rights as burgher — from which the painter was able to protect his privileges relative to others. This state of affairs started to break up at the end of the 17 th century. An indication of this in the area of sculpture is the decade-long dispute between the Swedish-born cabinetmaker Olef Engelholm, who had acquired citizenship of Lőcse, with another Lőcse burger, the sculptor Ferdinand Beichel. Artists established privileges in the society of 18 th century towns only via a title acquired at the Academy of Art in Vienna, either membership or diploma, and sometimes had to struggle for recognition even with these. Slovak (formerly Czechoslovak) research dates the Selmecbánya painting to 1764, via the compositional similarity of the town view to a 1764 pen-and-ink drawing, linking it with the visit of the Habsburg Archduke to Selmecbánya in 1764, and attributes the painting to the Vienna painter Anton Schmidt, who settled in the town. Despite such knowledge of its iconography and the artist's intent, the painting resists further interpretation. Its relationship with the engraving on which it is based, however, offers a window on to the changing social position of artists and their strategies for social advancement, potentially leading to a more complete understanding of art in 17 th-18 th century Hungary.
