Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 97. (Budapest, 2002)
The Year 2002
L'EREDTIÀ ESTERHÁZY: DIESGNI DEL SEICENTO DAL MUSEO DI BELLE ARTI DI BUDAPEST (THE ESTERHÁZY HERITAGE. 17TH-CENTURY ITALIAN DRAWINGS FROM THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS) ISTITUTO NAZIONALE PER LA GRAFICA, ROME PALAZZO DI FONTANA DI TREVI JUNE 18 - SEPTEMBER 15, 2002. CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION: ANDREA CZÉRE The collection of old masters drawings of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest is one of the most significant collections in Central Europe. In the recent decades, a great number of works from the collection, containing almost 8000 items, had been loaned for differendt exhibitions in Europe and America. The 17th-century Italian drawings, however, were on their first independent exhibition in 2002 in Rome, where 94 of the most precious items of the collection were shown to the international public. The selection documented the art of drawing of the largest and artistically the most influential Italian regions (Bologna-Emilia, Rome, Florence-Tuscany, Genua, Naples and Veneto) and presented the works of the most outstanding artists of the age, such as Ludovico, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Guercino, Simone Cantarini, Daniele Crespi, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Giovanni Baglione, Pier Francesco Mola, Salvator Rosa, Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maratta, Giacinto Calandrucci, and Guiglielmo Cortese. Numerous sketches among the drawings exhibited are related to frescos and oil paintings that can be found in the palaces, churches or collections in Rome and other Italian cities. The best known pieces at the exhibition were certainly Annibale Carracci's two studies to his chef-d'oeuvre, The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, the central painting of the ceiling fresco decorating the Gallery of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The sketch of an angel's head by Domenichino is linked to the St. Cecily-frescoes in the Polet Chapel of the San Luigi dei Francesi church in Rome, whereas Guido Reni 's early Caravaggesque Crucifixion of St. Peter is related to his painting in the Vatican Gallery. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's coloured sketches figured also among the drawings of special beauty; the Allegory in Honour of the Mantuan Princely Couple is a study to the artist's painting now in a Genuese private collection. Guercino's drawing depicting the Triumph of David is related to his painting executed for the collection of the Galleria Colonna in Rome, but today exhibited at Burghley House, England. Two sketches representing Miraculous Baptisms by St. Peter, works by the leading painter of the late Baroque period of Rome, Carlo Maratta, can be drawn in connection with the paintings destined for Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome, which are now conserved in the San Francesco church, LJrbino. Salvator Rosa's Prometheus is a study to the painting in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Arte Antica in Rome. The vast majority of the drawings come from the most famous Hungarian collection, that of the Esterházy princes. The most devoted collector of the family was Prince Nicolas Esterházy (1765-1833), who, in the first three decades of the 19th century, established
