Jávor Anna - Lubomír Slavícek szerk.: Késő barokk impressziók, Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796) és Josef Winterhalder (1743-1807) (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai)
Jávor Anna: „Láttam én tornyait Szily templomának". Maulbertsch és Winterhalder Szombathelyen
on 27 February 1798, first for the painting of the sanctuary ceiling. Now the already finished Maulbertsch sketches had to be obtained from the painter's widow, Katharina Schmutzer, who set a high price. Finally the bishop bought the necessary three of the four sketches for 500 florins each, and they arrived by March. In the accompanying letter Schmutzer claims that the sketch of the sanctuary ceiling, the Annunciation, had never been done in tondo format, but there were two versions; the other painted on wood was given by Maulbertsch to his confessor. This latent picture was published by Klára Garas in 1971, and a copy of it is preserved in the Museum of Langenargen. Szily had not seen the sketch for the nave ceiling earlier, and by the 20 th century it left Szombathely. The letter described the symbols of the Virgin it included of which Gedeon's fleece is not included in the colour sketch recovered from Prague but in a small autonomous bozzetto in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. It is not known if they belonged together originally. This fresco was executed by Viennese Anton Spreng after Winterhalder's death. Bishop Szily only lived to see the painted decoration of the sanctuary. After his death on 2 Januarv 1799 the work was supervised by canon János Eölbey. Winterhalder and his assistant Martin Michl spent three seasons in Szombathely. The Last Judgment ceiling fresco of the St Michael chapel (whose sketch is in Lviv / Lemberg) and the sanctuary fresco are by Winterhalder, while he left the decoration of the side walls to Michl. In the meantime they also undertook two jobs in the vicinity: the picture for the high altar of the Mary Magdalene church in Simaság and that of the All Souls church in Pinkamindszent (the sketch of the latter also in Lviv), both by Winterhalder, and the somewhat poorer joint decoration of the sanctuary in the latter were probably made in 1800 commissioned by the Festetich family. Winterhalder handled the Maulbertsch sketches with great reverence, yet he strongly modified the Szombathely ceiling frescoes. He changed the proportions and perspective of the animated frescoes enlarged into multifigural compositions. This is the most conspicuous in the Presentation: Winterhalder uses the bottom view here virtuosically, "re-baroqueizing" the fresco, while there are many new details of a neo-classical flavour, too. Contemporaries praised the work for its colours and qualities, his acclaim being comparable to Maulbertsch' in Szombathely, while posterity mixed them up as authors for quite a long time.
