Prohászka László: Equestrian Statues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)

tion of the statue of Count András Hadik. These ornaments are smoothly integrated into the composition as a whole, while giving the piece a unique aura.

“No bombastic posing, no heroic posturing. What we have before us here is intelligence in the horse and its rider, portrayed in unassertive beauty... There is some frisky ‘hussar charm’ about it, which grips me whenever I see it... This Hadik could ride right onto the stage where Cost fan tutte is playing, even though there is nothing stagy about it; it is just akin in spirit to Mozart’s tunes,” wrote Miklós Borsos, the outstanding representative of twentieth-century Hungarian sculpture.

The municipality of the first district has had the neighbourhood tidied up and prettified, and they have even managed to banish all cars from the vicinity of the monument. Miniature china copies of the Hadik statue, as well as those of “The Horseherd”, the other piece of public sculpture by Vastagh, have been manufactured and sold by the Herend porcelain factory for decades.

1937 was another of those few years when more than one equestrian statue was unveiled in Budapest. After the ceremonial inauguration of the Hadik statue on 29 April, it was the monument to the Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II (1676- 1735) that was unveiled, on the southern side of Kossuth tér, the square in front of the parliament building.

The statue was one of the few public monuments of the 1930s whose erection was financed from the state budget and not out of private fund-raising. Without having to compete, János Pásztor was commissioned to design this impressive monument. The prince, who led the country into battle against the Habsburgs in the War of Independence between 1703 and 1711, is represented bareheaded, in light armoury (breast, arm, back and thigh plates) and a pair of soft-topped, spurred boots, with a sword on his side and two contemporary pistols by his knees in the saddle of his horse, which rears up on its hind feet. Rákóczi’s high birth is suggested by the most prestigious order of the period, the Golden Fleece, whose sash lies across his armoury. In his right hand the prince holds an ornamented mace, indicative not only of his rank as com- mander-in-chief, but also of his having been elected reigning prince of Transylvania on 8 July 1704 by the Gyula- fehérvár diet (the mace was a symbol of this dignified po39