Prohászka László: Equestrian Statues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)
plates of varying size. This however, although relieving the penury of many a wounded veteran, could not alter the increasingly ominous course that war events took. Hungary found itself among the losers of the war. The monument suffered multiple damage during the reign of the Soviet Republic of 1919, and many of the metal plates were also removed. In the early twenties, the idea of relocating the monument in the interest of the city’s beautification was raised more than once, and the statue was in fact removed to the courtyard of the Ludovika, into a spot in front of the left-hand-side wing of the military academy. The monument of National Generosity was in a severely damaged condition after 1945. It was eventually demolished; a few of its fragments are deposited in the Museum of Military History, while the head can be seen in the Budapest History Museum. The surviving fragment of the horseman’s head that was part of the destroyed monument of National Generosity is a memento of Hungary’s losses in the war and of the country’s vanished artistic dreams. From 1918 to 1945 For years during the deep depression that followed the war, the erection of expensive monuments was out of the question. Smaller equestrian statues were of course born, even in this period. The main fagade of the Corvin Cinema, opened in 1924, is decorated with three reliefs. The carved limestone pieces were already made by József Róna sr., with the assistance of his son-in-law Lajos Greff. Above the main entrance in the middle is a copy of the famous marble portrait made of King Mátyás by an anonymous master in the 15th century. On either side is a large relief depicting a scene from the reign of Mátyás Hunyadi (Corvinus). There are no inscriptions on them, but the themes speak for themselves. In the one to the left, the monarch is surrounded by his artists and scholars, while the right-hand-side relief depicts him taking the greetings of the citizens of the conquered Vienna. The king’s figure in the latter is an obvious allusion to János Fadrusz’s famous equestrian statue in Kolozsvár. The only difference between the two is that here, for the 27
