Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 104. (Budapest, 2006)
ANDREA GZÉRE: Nicolas Poussin's Allegory in the Collection of Drawings in Budapest
NICOLAS POUSSINS ALLEGORY IN THE COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS IN BUDAPEST ANDREA CZERE Although Nicolas Poussin's (1594-1665) allegorical drawing in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (fig. I) 1 has been known for a long time to experts studying the artist's achievements —and has featured in several exhibitions and publications 2 —it has not been researched more deeply, its meaning has not been deciphered, and its earlier Budapest bibliography has not been taken into consideration. This might explain how Rosenberg and Prat, too, cited it with an uncertain definition of subject matter in their œuvre-catalogue of Poussin drawings, attributing its discovery as a work of Poussin to Vitzthum and Thullier, who published this drawing in 1969 as a newer addition to the so-called Marino drawings. On the contrary, the facts are as follows: the drawing in the Esterházy Collection —following a traditional attribution —was already recorded as a work of Poussin. In the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, in the first decades of the twentieth century, when Poussin's draughtsmanship was known only through his most typical drawings, this piece was tentatively attributed to Michel Corneille le jeune (1642-1708), until in 1933 Edith Hoffmann returned it to the great French master of Classical Baroque within an exhibition she arranged of French drawings.' The literature until now places the sheet within the artist's early period, on the basis of its similarity to drawings Poussin made in Paris between 1622 and 1623 for his first friend and patron, the poet Giovanni Battista Marino. 4 The Alarino series, preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor, however, is problematic in itself from a number of aspects, thus provoking great debate." Some have placed its authenticity into question, as the styles are not homogeneous, nor is their quality uniform/' The presumption about the drawings that illustrate themes derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses —and are similar also in their generally extended horizontal format —is that they served to amuse the sickly poet. There were also those who considered these sheets the
