Sz. Kürti Katalin - Hapák József: Munkácsy Mihály Krisztus-képei (Debrecen, 1993)

MIHÁLY MUNKÁCSY'

S PAINTINGS PORTRAYING CHRIST M

IHÁLY MUNKÁCSY (1844-1900) settled in Paris in the year 1871 after his studies at Munich and Düsseldorf. First he continued painting folk scenes as Valiant of the Village, Recruits then turned to city motifs Drunken Husband Returning Home, Night Tramps, Baba's Visitors, Pawnshop. In 1878 he made a hit with his Milton (after a tour through Europe it won golden medal at the World Exhibition in Paris), this gave an impetus to him to create history-cultural paintings. It was his manager Karl Sedelmeyer, the art-dealer, who regarded the suggestion of the Christ motif as his own merit, but in fact, the problem is much more involved. Mihály Munkácsy in 1874 saw Tintoretto's paintings featuring Christ in the Scuola di Rocco in Venice. He also read the book entitled Christ's Life by Ernest Renan, which describes Christ as a superb, selfsacrificing man, the son of the Galilean carpenter. His Russian friend Antokolsky, the sculptor called his attention to the biblical paintings by Ivanov, and to the Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoi, published that time serialized in the Parisian journals. Tolstoi objected Renan's line and Mihailov, the painter, who featured Christ as a godlike Man instead of the Son of God. Also his neighbour, Gustav Doré, had an influence on Munkácsy. Doré prepared his illustration to the Bible in 1864 and presented at the beginning of the seventies his canvases The Dream of Pilate's Wife, Christ Leaves the Praetorium, Behold the Man, Ascension in Paris and London. Munkácsy began to work on the first of his Christ paintings entitled Christ before Pilate in the winter 1879/80. In one and a half year he made thirty sketches and five composition studies and after the great effort of the last days he exhibited the 417x636 cm painting on Easter 1881 in Sedelmeyer'

s palace. It attracted admirers from the whole Paris, thousands of people visited the exibition discussing whether the painting was only religious or philosophical. Munkácsy has succeded in solving his task so that both the Church and Renan appreciated his achievment, as he featured Christ a sublime and in his faith firm character. Munkácsy himself said in an interview; "I intended to portrait God appearing in human body". Sedelmeyer organized a triumphant Europian procession for the painting: it was taken in a special railway carriage from town to town through the Continent and in Britain. In the meantime Munkácsy worked on the second painting, the original title of which was Consummatum est! (It is finished!) later it was given the name Golgotha or Christ on Calvary. After fifteen studies started he carrying out the great work. He made drawnings and took photos of his models, once even had himself fixed onto a cross in order to experience the physical suffering for the sake of its better presentation. By the Easter of 1884 the big canvas was ready. With its 460x712 cm dimensions it was the largest work Munkácsy had performed so far. Together with the Christ before Pilate taken back from Britain it was exhibited in Sedelmeyer'

s palace in a pavilion built for the purpose. The success was enormous, even Maupassant made mention of it in his novel Bel Ami. The first painting in 1882, the second one in 1884 were presented in Budapest, the capital town of Hungary freshly united from Buda and Pest. It was then that the freedom of the town was presented to Munkácsy, later he was given an ovation in other Hungarian cities as well. The two mighty paintings were exhibited also in America, Munkácsy himself accompanied the first in November 1886. He was given such a warm reception and ovation, as Lajos Kossuth in his time. There were more than one applicant for buying the paintings, John Wannemaker, a real self-made-man won the competition, he bought the two canvases for 120,000 and 100,000 dollars (or, according to other sources, for 175,000 and 160,000 dollars, respectively.) He kept them in his country house in Jenkinstown, from 1911 on in Philadelphia, in a special room of the eight-storied Wanamaker Store, which employed five thousand people. His heirs made the paintings popular by hanging them in the hall of the store in Lent and at Easter. So it went till 1988. Let's come back to Munkácsy'

s biography. Im 1894 Gábor Kádár, graphic artist and publisher, suggested to him to bring up the series of paintings to a trilogy. This idea surfaced already in 1884, when Munkácsy declared in Budapest, that he was