Kárpáti Zoltán - Liptay Éva - Varga Ágota szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 101. (Budapest, 2004)

ANNUAL REPORT 2004 - A 2004. ÉV - PUBLICATIONS - KIADVÁNYOK - ENIKŐ BUZÁSI: Ágnes Szigethi, Old French Painting, 16—18th Centuries

in 1821 as a composition of Caravaggio; and Michel Dorigny's Parnassus arrived into the Princes' Gallery a few years previous as a work of Simon Vouet. I am hurrying to establish that in the cases of Caravaggio and Vouet, it is not just the influential masters, but in connection with the paintings under discussion, we are talking about wellgrounded correlations; we must consider both as forgivable errors, whose correction has taken place in several steps and has only surfaced in recent times, as we are informed by Ágnes Szigethi's detailed description of research history. Notwithstanding, after all there is a type of "guiding principle" to the artworks deriving from old collections, based upon the knowledge of their origin and past, which, if followed, often means that the "only" thing the professionals of succeeding generations have to do is refine, situate, identify the correlations and clarify. But the genuine thing, if I can put it that way - the nicest task is the complete art historical disclosure of the work, with the excitement of the process of recognition and identification and the joy of the conclusion, which is granted most often in the case of artworks cropping up in obscurity. And as there is a good number of such cases in this volume, it is thus justified that we address them separately here. As a result of the research of recent years, we can now identify the master of the Allegory of the Arts, of distinguished quality, as determined by Vilmos Tátrai, as the work of Nicolas Régnier; Jacques Fouquiéres's painting depicting a Forest Landscape with Travellers, which was identified by Ildikó Ember; the attractive infant portrait, Philip, which emerged a couple of years ago, and which Eva Nyerges recognised as the work of Jean Ranc; and finally two further paintings, which Ágnes Szigethi located within the œuvres of two painters: the painting entitled Ideal Landscape with Shepherd, ascribed to Jean-François Millet, and Pierre Antoin Quillard's intimate, Watteau-inspircd composition, The Island of Love. It is evident from the volume, however, and the author indicates everywhere, that there are still many tasks to be completed - exciting and challenging, or just to be handled with care, depending upon the quality of the picture and its cultural historical past. For the most part, however, these pieces appear as powerful works full of character, still concealed behind anonymity, the designation of which might just have an influence upon some significant oeuvre, providing an even greater rank to the Old French Painting Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, which has already been significant. Ágnes Szigethi's book, by all means, provides a sure footing for carrying on even further. ENIKŐ BUZÁSI