Agria 38. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2002)

Szigethi Ágnes: A Pyrker-képtár Budapesten

Agnes Szigeti The Pyrker Picture Gallery in Budapest János László Pyrker, archbishop of Eger, was well versed in the arts, whether that be literature, music or the visual arts. We still have his poems, and the collection he put to together during his years as patriarch of Venice (1820-27) proved he had an insatiable appetite for the fine arts. Following his appointment as archbishop of Eger he took his picture collection with him to Eger before personal obligation demanded that he give a substantial part of the collection to the Hungarian National Museum. The collection was taken to Pest in 1844 where it was shown at the first exhibition ever held at the new National Museum. In 1896, the paintings became part of the recently founded Museum of Fine Arts, forming part of the collection of foreign masters. Once completed (1906) the building in Heroes' Square became the new permanent home of Pyrker's art collection. Indeed, a substantial number of the paintings can still be found in the permanent collection today. The make-up of the collection was very much determined by the fact that Pyrker either bought, or was given, a lot of his paintings in Venice. As a result the most important works are Italian. Only a small percentage of the paintings are Dutch or German. This paper intends to concentrate on a number of the more important Italian works, particularly two portraits which also happen to be two of the most important examples of the genre. Both provide insights into one of the most important turning points in the development of Renaissance portraiture, being painted at a time when a genre celebrating the cult of the individual sought not only to capture external appearances but realise the possibilities provided by the expression of the personal and the spiritual. In Gentile Bellini's portrait of Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, the artist's dispassionate treatment of the facial features of a woman beyond her youthful prime contrasts with the handling of her clothing, jewellery and her translucent veils. The resulting image is nevertheless an undisputed masterpiece. A mere decade separates Bellini's portrait from the second portrait in the Pyrker collection, the so-called Brocardo Portrait. The face of the pensive melancholic young gentleman looks up from his thin white shirt collar. His hand, placed across his chest, emerges out of the subtle shades of darkness provided by the clothing worn on the upper part of his body. The picture presents us with several problems relating to the question of authorship, the identity of the person depicted, the date it was painted and the special significance of the image. The picture has prompted a literature large enough to fill a small library, and all those art historians with any interest in Renaissance painting have expressed their opinions on 42