Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)
spent in Rome, where he acquired an important collection of Renaissance small sculpture, which is now in the possession of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. The pride of this collection is Leonardo's Little Hor&eman. Sometimes referred to as The Beginning ofi the Fine Am, Ferenczy’s neo- Classicist-Romanticist work was exhibited in a downstairs room of the Royal Palace of Buda. That was followed by several portraits already made in Hungary of notorieties including Kazinczy, András Fáy, József Brunszvik, Ferenc Kölcsey, Sándor Rudnay and others. These really outstanding pieces reflect the artist’s aspiration to create true-to-life likenesses of a daring execution. Thanks to a descendant of Ferenczy’s, the plaster moulds of these pieces have been preserved and are kept in the Gömör Museum of his native Rimaszombat. In 1840 a society was formed to promote the cause of sculpture in Hungary. The society commissioned Ferenczy to prepare designs for a King Matthias Monument. An impressive public monument of Hungary’s national monarch was meant to symbolise the wished-for independence of the country. Fulfilment of the task, however, was beyond Ferenczy’s powers: despite the favourable reception that the model of the statue met with at the Pest market of November 1940, the huge sum required for the full-scale monument was not made available by the nation-wide fund-raiser that was to follow. Although Ferenczy made an attempt, in 1843, to cast the metal parts of the monument in a forge set up in Buda, by that time the very idea of erecting the monument had cooled off due to "the lack of public enthusiasm”. Ferenczy was disheartened by the unpleasant and sometimes offensive tone of the dispute about the monument and by the disregard he himself was treated with — in 1864 he sold his house in Buda, destroyed many of his works and retired permanently to Rimaszombat. In spite of his former master Thorvaldsen’s invitation to stay on in Rome, his patriotic calling brought him home to die - after a promising start, a man disappointed in everything and everybody. St. Christopher the Protector Sculptor Tamás Asszonyi’s work was mounted on the downtown building at 4 Kristóf tér in 1974. Piled one on the other, the irregular blocks of stone create the effect of a casual composition of pieces salvaged from the scattered remains of a demolished object. Out of all this emerges the generously 28
