Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 102-103. (Budapest, 2005)
ANNUAL REPORT 2005 - A 2005. ÉV - JÁNOS VÉGH: Dürer and His Contemporaries: Monumental Woodcuts by Outstanding Artists. The Triumph of Emperor Maximilian I
The Triumphal Arch made an even more impressive impact: according to the original concept, the individual arches were put up one above the other; hence, the arch of three-and-a-half metres almost reached the ceiling in the middle of the room. Thus, unlike the carriages and the figures marching in the procession, it was impossible to view the arch with the minute care that woodcuts merit. In fact, it might have been exactly what the artist originally intended: to enthral the viewer with the monumental grandeur. Besides closely scrutinising the details, the viewer could meditate over the oddity of the early sixteenth-century mentality 7 : an era that preferred celebrating its own glory by recalling customs that reached back to one-and-a-half millennia earlier. They chose to actualise the praise of the reigning emperor with a practice taken from Antiquity, but what was even more peculiar, they executed it not out of stone or bronze, but from paper, a vulnerable material that was nevertheless felt to be a "monument outlasting bronze". Emperor Maximilian and the Humanist thinkers of his court were —however contradictory it may sound —men of their time, both in recalling Antiquity, as well as in the use of printing. With the former, they conformed to the thinking of their time, while with the latter, they paid tribute to a past achievement of their homeland, a craft that was not taken over from Italy, but developed on German soil. Extolling in such a way the values of their country was itself a progressive gesture at the time. The catalogue begins with two articles: Mathias F. Müller, one of the authors of the Dürer-catalogue of the Albertina exhibition, articulated some of the thoughts expressed here as well, on the style of a Humanist court; while the curator of the exhibition, Szilvia Bodnár, provided a detailed analysis of the artworks. Finally, please allow a remark on the subtitle of the exhibition: the artists are indeed outstanding, and the woodcuts are also unusually monumental, especially in the way they are placed together. Yet the Museum of Fine Arts has no need for such a cheap, sensationalist play on words. János Végh
