Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
Péter Meller († 2008)
ably termed at the time a museologist. For a short time he worked in the Classical Antiquities department and then dealt with the sculptures collection, where Jolán Balogh entrusted him with the modern Hungarian and foreign sculptures section. Although the responsibilities he was entrusted with were far from his area of interest, he discharged them with model meticulousness, which is attested to by his report written on the condition of this collection (SzMK 5, 1954, 81-83, 132-34) but most importantly by his essay summarising the history of the collection from the nineteenth century, executed with astute scholarship, and included in the volume edited by Gábor O. Pogány and Béla Bacher published on the fiftieth anniversary of the museum's establishment (A Szépművészeti Múzeum 1906-1956 [The Museum of Fine Arts 1906-1956], Budapest 1956, 192-209). In the meantime, he immersed himself in his studies of the art of the Italian Renaissance (demonstrated by his first major essay on Leonardo published in Acta Históriáé Artium ASH), while finding it increasingly unbearable that he was no longer allowed to travel and was thus prevented from pursuing the research he valued above all else. After the revolution of 1956 he seized upon the first opportunity to leave the country with his family (his wife Mária Kálmán was also an art historian at the Museum of Fine Arts) in order to continue the scientific w r ork he had never interrupted, first in Vienna, then for a decade in Florence, followed by a short stay in Berlin and finally in Santa Barbara, California as a professor of Renaissance art. The Museum of Fine x\rts lost one of its most promising scholars, who in his heart always remained true to its collections: even three decades later in one of his essays he revisited the two studies by Leonardo made for the fresco The Battle of Anghiari, both of which are preserved in the museum's Department of Prints and Drawings. János György Szilágyi
