Prohászka László: Equestrian Statues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)
tended to complete the piece at home, using materials made in Hungary. He intended to decorate the front and the back of the pedestal with a relief each, one featuring the allegory of Science, the other that of Force, which he actually completed in neo-Classicist style. Parliament, however, refused to provide funding for the Mátyás monument. Deeply disappointed, Ferenczy smashed up all the plaster models in disgust. He even sold his town house in Buda and moved back to his native Rimaszombat, where he lived in retirement until his death. What survives of the project are the two bronze reliefs meant for the Mátyás statue, now on display at the Hungarian National Gallery (in the former Royal Palace of Buda in District I.). Mention must be made here of one beautiful steed, even though it is the work of an Austrian, rather than Hungarian artist. Erected on what is today’s Pollack Mihály tér, the building of the Budapest Riding School opened in 1858, and in the same year a magnificent horse figure was sculpted by Anton Dominik Fernkorn, creator of the pride of Vienna’s Heldenplatz, the monuments of Crown Prince Charles Habsburg and Eugene of Savoy. The life-size figure of the horse, walking at a leisurely pace, was erected to decorate the fagade of the Horse School, an imposing, saddle-roofed building designed by Miklós Ybl. It is regrettable that this classic specimen of sculptural beauty of Fernkorn’s was destroyed in World War 11. The building erected to house the first indoor riding school of Budapest was itself damaged and subsequently demolished after 1945, regardless of objections raised by the National Committee for Monument Preservation. The destruction of the building is a crying shame and so is the loss of the statue of the superb stallion. Before 1848, it was mainly financial problems that thwarted any effort to raise equestrian monuments, but afterwards, in the period of Hungary’s subjugation between the country’s defeat in the 1848-49 War of Independence and the signing of the Austro-Hungarian settlement in 1867, political considerations also prevented the erection of such statues. The latter is best exemplified by the case of the monument erected in honour of Palatine József (Joseph) (1776-1847). No sooner had this most distinguished scion of the Hungarian branch of the Habsburgs 5
