Kárpáti Zoltán - Liptay Éva - Varga Ágota szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 101. (Budapest, 2004)
ANNUAL REPORT 2004 - A 2004. ÉV - TEMPORARY EXEIIBITIONS - IDŐSZAKI KIÁLLÍTÁSOK - ANDREA CZÉRE: The Esterházy Heritage: 17th-Century Italian Drawings at Budapest's Museum of Fine Arts
THE ESTERHÁZY HERITAGE: 17TH-CENTURY ITALIAN DRAWINGS AT BUDAPEST'S MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 25 March 1 August 2004 Curator: Andrea Czére Andrea Czére, L 'ereditá Esterházy. Disegni italiani del seicento dal Museo di Belle Arti di Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 2002, 235 pp., Italian, 102 col. and 98 b&w. ills., ISBN 963 05 7940 5 Czére Andrea, Az Esterházy-örökség. A Szépművészeti Múzeum 17. századi olasz rajzai [The Esterházy Heritage. 17th-Century Italian Drawings at Budapest's Museum of Fine Arts], Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 2003, 235 pp., Hungarian, 102 col. and 89 b&w. ills., ISBN 963 05 8056 X Andrea Czére, The Heritage of the Esterházy. 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest 2004, 71 pp., Hungarian and English, 25 col. ills., ISBN 963 7441 97 2 The drawing collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, comprising some 8000 pieces, is one of the most significant in Central Europe, with numerous artworks from the collection lent to European and American exhibitions over the past few decades. In 2002, for the opening event of the Hungarian Cultural Year in Italy, nearly one hundred pieces from the seventeenth century drawing collection were presented at the Palazzo di Fontana di Trevi in Rome. In an expanded version of the Rome exhibition, the show in Budapest embraced 126 drawings and 66 etchings. It is owing to the wealth of the collection that the selected works provided a representative picture not only of the leading artistic tendencies, but also informed as to the characteristic range of subjects, the preponderance of religious depictions, and faithfully reflected the general knowledge of the mythological tradition, the popularity of the allegorical mode of expression, and the individual rank of the landscape and the portrait. The head and figure studies, the composition sketches of various degrees of elaboration, documented the path leading to the creation of paintings, frescoes and etchings, and the painstaking graphic preparatory work typical of the Italian artists. The exhibition presented the graphic art of the largest and, from the perspective of art history, most important Italian regions: Bologna-Emilia, Rome, Florence-Tuscany, Genoa, Naples and Veneto, according to school, and chronologically arranged, keeping in mind the ratios of the collection, as well as the master-student relations, and the overall picture was enriched by numerous newly identified works. With respect to the number of their works as well, such renowned authors stood out as Ludovico, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, considered the forerunners of Baroque art, as well as their students and followers, among them Domenichino, Guido Reni and Francesco Albani. Numerous drawings from the two most singular representatives of the graphic art of Bologna, Guercino and Simone Cantarini, are likewise preserved in the collection, which in large part were displayed within the exhibition. Among the representatives of
