Benkő Andrea: A Guide to Petőfi Literary Museum (Budapest, 2009)
The Art and Relics Collection
THE ART AND RELICS COLLECTION Endre Ady (Photo: Aladár Székely, Budapest, 1912) ation will be another complete and organic work.' (Foreword to Benedek Baja's Vér és arany [Blood and GoldI, a portfolio of 12 lithographs produced as illustrations for Ady's poems, 1924) Our graphics collection is completed by picture poems, ex libris, cover designs and unique book designs. The oldest piece in the sculpture, small sculpture and coin collection of more than 2,000 items is Ferenc Kazinczy's life mask (1816) in a death-mask collection of nearly thirty items. The richest line in our sculpture assemblage is that of the portrait (works by Miklós Izsó, György Zala, Fülöp Ö. Beck, Amerigo Tot, Miklós Melocco), but it also includes several tomb plans as well. Approaching 30,000 items, the photograph collection is of exceptional value from a Flungarian literary and photograph-historical point of view. It is the media and publishing houses which capitalise on this wealth. One of the oldest Hungarian proto-photographs - the pride of our photograph collection - is a daguerreotype of Sándor Petőfi. The only authentic Petőfi portrait on the shining silver plate was the only genuine prototype for all later works of art: paintings, sculptors, coins and graphics of the poet. Two other daguerreotypes in the collection depict Lajos Kossuth. The seven ferrotype photographs - individual positive pictures produced on iron-sheets - also count among the rarities. One of our ferrotype photographs represents the young Ferenc Molnár. The photo series created by André Kertész, a Hungarian-born photographer who later became world-famous, is also a real curio: the series taken at the end of the twenties shows places from Ady's life. In addition to the Hungarian National Museum, our Relics Collection preserves the relics of renowned authors from the Hungarian past. The information content of these personal belongings is invaluable, as they are not only material documents but once also shared the author's living space. An object as a message conveys meaning and can help to reconstruct the author's environment, tastes, wardrobe and pleasures. The inheritance of the objects and the story of how they came to be in the Museum speak volumes about meeting-points in the course of the writers' lives and the turns in the fate of these objects. The collecting process therefore also affects family members and relatives. The Collection keeps a record of approximately 3,000 objects including furniture, clothing, ornaments and personal belongings to do with writing (e.g. pens, spectacles and typewriters). The focus of the Collection is pieces formerly owned by classical Hungarian writers from the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. We have Sándor Petőfi's and Mór Jókai's fascinating relics from the earlier Petőfi House, which are Walter Madarassy: Ady illustration. Bronze medal 19
