Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 100. (Budapest, 2004)

URBACH, ZSUZSA: Ein flämischer ikonographischer Bildtypus im italienischen Quattrocento. Bemerkungen zur Studie von Éva Eszláry

TO THE HISTORY OF SCULPTURES IN MEMORY OF COUNT IVÁN FORRAY An intensive study on the collection of 19

th-century sculptures

1 in the Museum of Fine Arts shed light on the fact that there were a host of unanswered questions surrounding the bust of Count Iván Forray (Soborsin, Arad county, 1817 - Vienna, 1852) that became part of the Museum of Fine Arts' collection after a sort of "profiling" had been carried out in the "National Historical Museum of Hungary" (fig. 46).

2 The entry created during the cataloguing shows, on the one hand, considerable uncertainty about the identity of the artist ("Mid- 19

th-century foreign sculptor"); on the other hand, it makes an attempt at deciphering the worn inscription on the back of the sculpture: "C... .Slepinilg J. 1853". The aim of the present study is to dispel the obscurity surrounding the provenance of this work of art, the circumstances of its genesis, and its relationship with other portraits of Forray. Moreover, the sources discovered eventually provided new identification for another portrait that represents a previously unknown man. One of the most important events in the short life of Count Iván Forray, an aristocrat who held progressive views,

3 was his journey to Italy, Malta, Egypt, and Syria in 1842. As it was customary at the time, he recorded the scenes he visited, as well as his impressions and experiences pertaining to them, in the form of journal entries and watercolour sketches. Although he was no explorer, his notes and illustrations led art historians to recognise him as an amateur painter, principally as the person who "discovered the romanticism of the Orient in Hungarian fine arts"

4

; besides, literature discussing great explorers also considers him as one of the Hungarian travellers in Africa and Egypt.

5 1 The present research was carried out with the support of the Hungarian Research Fund OTKA (no. T 020986). 2 Inv. no. 8368. U, bronze, height with plinth: 70 cm, inscribed on the front of the plinth: "Gróf Forray Iván" (Count Iván Forray). 3 Iván Forray studied law at the University of Pest. From 1839 on, he attracted attention in the Croatian Assembly, then in the Parliament in Bratislava. He was raised to the rank of a Count in 1847. 4 Cf. Művészeti Lexikon (Encyclopaedia of Art), eds. A. Zádor and I. Genthon, vol. 2, Budapest 1966, 101. In accordance with the age of Romanticism, his exotic watercolour studies and drawings are a reflection of the orientalist spirit. Later, these inspired him to create watercolours with an "ethnographic" content; moreover, to "design" costumes and settings. Some of these appear in art auctions every now and then. 5 The evaluation of the Count's journey to Egypt and the analysis of the sheets of his traveller's journal that are of historical interest is dealt with by Péter Gaboda, whom I would like thank here for drawing my attention to Forray.