Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)

ANNUAL REPORT • A 2008. ÉV - ZSUZSANNA GILA: Lines of Beauty

tacles, a highly effective visual form of princely propaganda. Essential to this were the famous products of semi-precious stone marquetry the pietre dure, manufactured by the grand ducal workshops and regarded as coveted luxury goods all over Europe. Visitors could also enjoy a sampler of the princely collection of curiosities, which included vessels made of special minerals, exotic objects from India, Africa and the Americas, botanical study drawings and decorations made for cabinets used to store corals and pearls. Axel Vécsey LINES OF BEAUTY 21 February 2008 - 12 May 2008 Concept and direction: Andrea Czére and Jean-François Méjanès J FANFRANÇOIS MÉJANÈS. CHRISTOPHE LE Rl BAU LT, VÉRONIQUE GOARIN. AND CATHERINE SCHECK, EROM POUSSIN TO DAVID: FRENCH MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LOUVRE. ED. ANDREA CZERE. PARIS 2008. HUNGARIAN AND ENGLISH TEXT. 135 PP., 84 COL. ILLS.. ISBN LOUVRE: 978 2 35031 170 8 The exhibition that arrived from Paris bridged an old gap by bringing eighty-four French drawings from the prints and drawings department of the Louvre. In fact, the modest number of sheets in the Prints and Drawings Department of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts would not have been sufficient to give an overall picture of seventeenth-eighteenth-century French drawing in the framework of an exhibition, since the taste of the Esterházy princes, who built the core of the museum's collection of drawings, gave preference in their purchases to Italian and Netherlandish works. The exhibition was staged as a result of an unprecedented collaboration between the Parisian and Budapest museums, and as such marked the beginning of a promising future. After the spring introduction of the French drawings in Budapest, the Louvre opened an exhibition in autumn 2008 entitled Renaissance et. maniérisme aux Pays Bas (Renaissance and Mannerism in the Netherlands) devoted solely to eighty Netherlandish drawings preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts' collection, curated by Teréz Gerszi.