Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
ANNUAL REPORT • A 2008. ÉV - AXEL VÉCSEY: The Splendour of the Medici: Art and Life in Renaissance Florence
THE ANNUAL REPORT 2008 THE SPLENDOUR OF THE MEDICI. ART AND LIFE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE 24 January - 18 May 2008 Curators: Monica Bietti and Annamaria Giusti MIL SPLENDOUROF THE MEDICI. ART AND LIFE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE. ID. MONICA BIETTI, ANNAMARIA GIUSTI. AND VILMOS TÁTRAI. BUDAPEST 2008. ENG LI S Fl TEXT, 351 PP., 232 COL. ILLS.. ISBN 978 963 7063 49 7 The Splendour of the Medici: Art and Life in Renaissance Florence was the opening event of the Year of the Renaissance, a cultural season commemorating the 550 th anniversary of King Matthias Corvinus' accession to the throne. The show explored the art of Florence in the two centuries when the Medici family were at the peak of their power. This prestigious selection of objects representing the Florentine Renaissance —one of the most important models for the court of Matthias —perfectly complemented the core event of the commemoration year: the interrelated exhibitions of the museums in the Buda Castle district, presenting the art of the Renaissance in Hungary. The links between these two centres of power was illustrated at the exhibition by the splendid Codex Damascenus from the National Széchényi Library, a book commissioned by Matthias from the Attavante workshop in Florence. The catalogue also included an essay by Péter E. Kovács on the ties between Florence and Buda. The curators of the Medici exhibition —Monica Bietti, an art historian for the Soprintendenza speciale per il Polo museale fiorentino, and Annamaria Giusti, a researcher at the Opificio delle Piètre Dure —a museum and conservation institute originally founded by the Medici as a workshop of decorative arts —laid down a well-organised structure within the units of which the exhibits contextualised each other perfectly. A major underlying idea was to explore all the objects that were executed to attain artistic quality as integral elements of the same material culture, i.e. to discard the artificial distinction between "fine" and "decora-
