Kárpáti Zoltán - Liptay Éva - Varga Ágota szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 101. (Budapest, 2004)
ANNUAL REPORT 2004 - A 2004. ÉV - PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS - ÁLLANDÓ KIÁLLÍTÁSOK - ILDIKÓ EMBER, ESZTER FABRY, AND ANNAMÁRIA GOSZTOLA: New Permanent Exhibition of the Old Masters' Gallery
In the following cabinet, number 13, alongside the works of Bartholomeus Spranger and Hans von Aachen, representatives of the Prague School, with the paintings of Johann König, Georg Flegel, Peter Binoit and Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, we present the various endeavours in the secular genres of the first decades of the seventeenth century. In the course of rearranging the seventeenth-eighteenth century German and Austrian section of the exhibition, in one hall and three cabinets, we took the opportunity to display, alongside the well-known works and a few new acquisitions, nearly thirty paintings that until now had been undeservedly left in storage. The expansion of the material allowed for all of the significant German and Austrian masters of the era to be represented in the exhibition by one or more artworks, and thus, the range of painting tendencies and genres is presented in more gradations and nuances than ever before. The section is opened by the paintings of the most important German masters of the seventeenth century, Johann Liss, Johann Heinrich Schönfeld and Johann Heinrich Roos, while in cabinet number 12, connected with the great hall X, a multifaceted picture reveals the experiments of the various German masters - who were often isolated from one another, as proceeding from the historical situation. In the interest of more amply presenting the objective and so-called imaginary tendencies of historical painting, we integrated into the exhibition two allegories purchased in 1998 by the eminent student of Schönfeld, Johann Heiss, which depict Industry and Commerce, as based upon Cesare Ripa's Iconology. As an old debt of the Gallery, the first international master of the German Baroque, Joachim von Sandrart, is now represented in the exhibition with his Portrait of an Old Man, restored with the aid of sponsorship. 5 Serving the multifaceted presentation of still life painting, gaining ever more ground, are the pictures of Abraham Mignon, Christoph Paudiss, Johann Karl Thill and Werner Tamm. Already highly respected by the eighteenth century, the Academy in Vienna made its impact in several genres. A number of examples of Austrian landscape painting evolving under the direction of Professor Franz Edmund Weirotter, are followed by the ample selection of portraits in cabinet number 11. The bourgeois portraits, and within this, the museum's extremely rich collection of self-portraits, are consummated by the new acquisition of Johann Gottfried Auerbach 's Self-Portrait, which most probably belonged to the portrait gallery of the former Count Laktanz von Firmian (1712-1786) in Leopoldskron. Among the representative portraits, finally the Portrait of Prince Joseph Wenzel von Liechtenstein has deservedly been installed in the permanent exhibition. The generous Viennese Maecenas was the patron of nearly all of the painters represented in this cabinet. His portrait-painter, Peter van Roy, as the master of Franz Anton Maulbertsch, leads the visitor into the number 10 cabinet, which is devoted to this great master's period. Here, the fortunate Beyond this, for the occasion of the rearrangement of the exhibition, among the German pictures, we restored another work, Rottmayr's Pietà, mentioned below; in both cases, the restoration work was realised with the kind support of Deutsche Telekom.
