Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
ANNUAL REPORT • A 2008. ÉV - ZSUZSANNA GILA: Renaissance and Mannerism in the Netherlands
RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM IN THE NETHERLANDS Musée du Louvre, 9 October 2008 - 12 January 2009 Concept and direction: Teréz Gerszi The exhibition's curator in the Louvre: Carel van Tuyll TEREZ GERSZI. RENAISSANCE ET MANIERISME AUX PAYS-RAS: DESSINS DU MUSÉE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE BUDAPEST. ED. HELENE GROLLEMUND. MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. BUDAPEST. BUDAPEST 2008. FRENCH TEXT. 135 PP.. 80 COL ILLS.. ISBN 978 2 35031 206 4 The exhibition entitled Renaissance and Mannerism in the Netherlands opened in autumn 2008, following the spring display of French drawings from the Louvre in the Budapest Museum. The works were displayed in the halls located on the second floor of the Louvre Museum. The event was especially important since it was the first ever independent exhibition —comprising seventy-nine drawings —of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts in the leading museum of Paris. The Museum of Fine Arts' collection of sixteenth-century Netherlandish drawings is outstanding in providing a comprehensive picture of the century's landscape art, through individual works as well as a number of great landscape series by artists such as Paulus van Vianen, Pieter II Stevens and the Master of the Budapest Sketch Book. Since the Louvre's collection is not so rich in landscape drawings, the Hungarian collection attracted their attention. Some of the sheets on display, on the other hand, might have appealed to visitors because they are rarities made by masters such as Cornelis Engebrechtsz, the sculptor Adriaen de Vries and Hans Mont, whose drawings have survived in extremely small numbers. Unlike that of the Louvre, the collection of drawings preserved by the Museum of Fine Arts, comprising some ten thousand sheets, was not established as a royal collection. The majority of the most valuable sheets were acquired by Prince Miklós Esterházy (1765-1833) and reflect his refined taste as well as the taste and orientation of the collection's curators. This core material was augmented from 1901 with a small number of drawings from the Delhaes bequest, the proportion of which is accurately reflected in the selection that was taken to the Louvre. Unfortunately, no acquisitions matching the Delhaes bequest were made afterwards. The collection increased but mostly through purchases, mainly from Hungarian private persons, and to a far lesser degree than previously, amounting to only a few sheets. This can be explained by the fact that collecting drawings has no tradition in Hungary and purchases from abroad came to a virtual halt after 1920, a joyful exception being the purchase of the Floris-
