Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 11. (Budapest, 1991)

RENNER Zsuzsanna: Baktay Ervin, mint művészettörténész és muzeológus

member that is was almost entirely owing to Imre Schwaiger (1864—1940), a collector and art dealer of Hungarian origin who lived and worked in Delhi and London between the two world wars. At the time of its foundation, there was hardly anything from India or Tibet in the collection of the museum. Later on, the slow increase in the Indian collection was due to some donations and deposits; through purchase, mainly textiles were added to the collection. From 1920 on, Schwaiger presented art works to the museum on several occasions; his largest and most valuable donation was made in 1939. Owing to the war and the difficulties of transportation in the years immediately following it, this donation arrived at Budapest in 1950 when Baktay had already been curator of the Indian collection. Of the 127 pieces, there were only a few items which did not belong to the Indian collection in the wide sense. The examination, description and cataloguing of the objects was immediately started by Baktay. Reliefs and stnccos from Gandhara constituted one of the most valuable groups of the donation. It was not the first time that Schwaiger had presented works of Gandhara n art to the museum; their dating had always raised serious problems as they, just like all the other items in Schwaiger's donations, lacked any scientific description. Their exact provenance was unknown though a correct dating could only be attempted on this basis; at least, this was the starting point and the main argument of contemporary literature on debated issues of Gandharan art. The only fact remaining for Baktay to go by was that sculptures in Gandhara were made from Himalayan schist in the 1—3rd centnries and from stucco in the 4—5th centuries. He attempted a more exact dating on the basis of garments and facial features, e.g. figures having distinctly Grecian features or wearing Greek garments were always regarded by him as being earlier than faces of the Indian or Scythian type. Among the sculptures and reliefs, there were some of the highest artistic value. One was a head of the Buddha (Plate 7.), which Baktay regarded as an early Hellenistic work showing natnralistic tendencies. Another head, that of a sovereign, was dated to a somewhat later period by Baktay on the basis of its Indo-Scythian facial features. Its vivid expression and powerful style rank it among the best pieces of the Gandharan collection (Plate 8.). There were some remarkable pieces among the stucco works as well. These late products of Gandharan art differ from earlier sculptures not only in material, but also in style, insofar as the earlier typifying tendency is replaced here by individual expression and portrait-like character (Plates 9—10.) Mathura sculptures formed another valuable group of Schwaiger's donation; in this case, the place of origin could be easily identified on the basis of the yellow spotted red sandstone they were made of. The problem with Mathura sculpture is that Mathura was an art centre for about one and a half millennia from the pre-Maurya age on; thus, in dating Mathura sculptures, it is only the stratified layer they are found in that can serve as an indisputable evidence. However, as in the case of the pieces presented by Schwaiger, there was no such information available, Baktay only had recourse to stylistic features when determining at least the approixmate date of the sculptures. From their stylistic features Baktay inferred that most of them went back to the Kushan-Gupta age, that is, to the 1—6th centuries. The artistic products of the Kushan and the Gupta age differ from each other in the details mainly - e.g., in the Kushan period the eyes tend to be