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

54. A detail of the great Flemish hall Still Lifes, were given place, just as the characteristically Flemish type of the genre, with combinations of garlands of flowers and fruit, is represented by the works of Nicolaes van Veerendael and Jan Pauwel Gillemans. We can see the works of the most significant genre painters, Gonzales Coques, Gillis van Tilborch, David Teniers the Younger and David Ryckaert III, often vehicles for moral content, together with the representative portraits of Peter van Lint and Frans Luyckx in cabinet number 2. An opportunity has opened now to present the diversified development of landscape painting, integrating some large-scale pictures in the last Flemish hall, which is adjacent on both sides to Spanish Baroque halls. The exhibition of seventeenth century Dutch paintings can be approached from two directions: by the staircase beginning alongside the entrance to the German halls from the corridor, or from across the rear staircase opening from the Bruegel hall, where there is also an elevator available to the visitors (fig. 55). The chronological arrangement leads from the main staircase across the period referred to as the Golden Age of Dutch Painting. The Dutch collection in Budapest, which comprises more than five hundred paintings, allows us to offer a comprehensive view of nearly every phenomenon of the period, that is important from an art historical point of view. We attempted to realise this by displaying two hundred forty-two works, presenting them in their correlations with regard to the characteristics of local schools, the development of artistic ways of seeing and painterly interpretation, and the parallel, if sometimes opposing, endeavours in the various genres, from 1600 up to the 1720s. Variety and abundance characterise this era, and this is what we wanted to suggest with the more crowded arrangement in comparison to the first floor, which might evoke the atmosphere of the old houses of the rich Dutch bourgeoisie (fig. 56). This section of the exhibition was completed nearly one year after its planned opening, due to various technical problems; however, during this time, the opportunity presented itself to restore more pictures. Thus, there were forty-two paintings which