Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)

Sinkó Katalin: Az alapítók biblikus képei és a századvég antihistorizmusa

from the symbolic and generalized interpretation on the other hand. Ferenczy deviated from the traditional depiction of the removal from the cross, insofar as he presented the scene, which is usually depicted against darkening skies, in dazzling sunshine, portraying the lamenting Magdalene as being "illuminated" by light in both sense of the word: physically as well as transcendentally. Removal from the Cross forms one of the peaks of Ferenczy's artistic ideals: the Biblical paintings he produced in Nagybánya form the various stages of his artistic development to surpass Naturalism. For Ferenczy, the furnishing of the pictures' primary interpretation with symbolic content meant the surpassing of Naturalism. In his programme pictures made between 1897 and 1900, István Csók tried to provide a symbolic expression of his artistic ideals. In God Bless You My Love, painted in 1897, he represent the modern artist torn between divine and worldly love - between the angel and Venus. The same idea was developed further in his huge canvas "And Deliver Me from the Evil", which contrasts the two mythical world, Christianity and Olympus. The intellectual background of Csók's pictures reveals the influence of the turn-of-the-century ideas going back to Schopenhauer, while the effects of Max Klinger's Christ on the Olympus, exhibited in the same year, can also be assumed. The Biblical works of the Nagybánya masters can be linked to a certain phase in the process of secularization in European religious art. They are associated partly with those European movements which aimed at the renewal of religious art (the paintings produced by Puvis de Chavannes, Fritz von Uhde or Franz Skarbina during the 1880s and 1890s) and partly with those art movements which presented traditional religious themes in a novel, philosophical, symbolic or existential interpretation (for example, Lovis Corinth, Max Klinger, etc.). The above-mentioned process of secularization was equally characterized by the secondary interpretation of Biblical themes and by the sacralization of the formerly profane role of artists, their assumption of prophetic attitudes.