Király Erzsébet - Jávor Anna szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 1997-2001, Művészettörténeti tanulmányok Sinkó Katalin köszöntésére (MNG Budapest, 2002)

TANULMÁNYOK / STUDIES - IMRE Györgyi: A leány azonosítása. Kiss Bálint Jablonczai Pethes János leányától búcsúzik a leopoldvári börtön ablakánál 1674-ben című festményén

GYÖRGYI IMRE Identification of the girl in Bálint Kiss' János Jablonczai Pethes taking leave of his daughter at the window of the Leopoldvár prison in 1674 (1846) The history of the reception of the painting János Jablonczai Pethes taking leave of his daughter at the window of the Leopoldvár prison in 1674 by Bálint Kiss (1846) (fig.l) reveals quite contrary responses, however it went to the recently founded Gallery of the National Museum after its first exhibition. The contemporary art critic Imre Henszlmann did not deem it worthy of the museum collection. His criticism centered around the "slapdash rendering of the girl's figure" and "the distortion of nature", as well as the clumsy conception of the theme - in short, the lack of the painter's academic expertise. By contrast, the National Museum's diary of copies reveals that after the suppressed revolution of 1848, at least ten artists copied it between 1850 and 1853, lithographs and other copies are also known; Bálint Kiss himself made a replica. The copies can be judged as products of the moral expectations of the period. In this light, the original painting can be interpreted as an image of private devotion. It was because its post-revolution cult that art historiography made of this painting the work among the pictures of the "Passion of the nation" charged with an antiHabsburg message. The motive of the actual paper is the identity of the girl's figure, separating the painting from its post-revolution cult, which opens a new context to its interpretation. The titular János Jablonczai Pethes was a historical personage. He was sentenced to the galleys as one of the protestant preachers driven from Pozsony (Bratislava) to Lipótvár (Leopoldov) in 1674, but rescued from martyrdom by the Saxon prince-elector John George II. Mária Csernitzky found historical sources of his figure in an 1836 manuscript of the painter's father Bálint Kiss sr., a Calvinist preacher and vicar, county judge and corresponding member of the Hungarian scholarly society, and in a letter of the painter himself, as well (see her contribution to this volume). The female protagonist is, however, unnamed. The stress on her unportrait-like exposition and the inner logic of the picture tears the viewer from the historical context and relocate the girl's figure in the classical scene representing the sacrificial love of the daughter, as heroine of the Caritas Romana. The face appearing in the background of the picture is of the jailer mentioned by the classical sources, as the witness of the daughter's heroic love for her father. Andor Pigler was the first who elaborated the iconography of the story of Ci mon and Pero recounted in two versions by Valerius Maximus (31 AD) in his compilation Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX. This work was one of the main sources of late renaissance and baroque painting. According to the recent researches on Roman Charity theme by Robert Rosenblum, the classical story took on a fresh relevance in 19th Century France, preeminently in Jacques-Louis David's studio, acquiring more and more complex connotations including anecdotal versions where the erotic component modestly submerged. Bálint Kiss' work belongs to the latter. The painter who was the student of the Vienna's Akademie der bildenden Künste during 1827-30 probably chose the erudite Pietas Christiana version of the classical story upon the influence of his neo-classical academic studies. His master in historical painting and composition was Johann Peter Krafft, who had acquired his French academic knowledge in David's studio in Paris. In Bálint Kiss' rendering the heroic eroticism of the female figure is submerged unlike in the academic prototypes. Concentrated on a single affective gesture, the girl's figure conveys the model of personal devotion to the father. Nevertheless, the originally achronic character of the picture built on the contrast of young woman / old man received a historic character here. The historical theme of Bálint Kiss' painting interlaced with the struggles of national protestantism lent the work a cultic and didactic sense. (The theme was presumably partly associated with the current political events of the age. In Hungary, the first canonical laws concerning the freedom of religion were enacted from 1844.) It is therefore more appropriate to search for analogies of the work of a peculiarly 'naive', archaic structure among printed pictures produced by the new media, often depriving an iconographie theme of its erothic "visual offer", dislike its erudite academic models. The new printed didactic type of medium of the so called "history in pictures" often represented the classical topic without female nude, like this picture of Bálint Kiss, who could also rely his motive on the common sense about the role of the woman in the society. The classical subject of the work on the reconciliation of catholic / protestant denominations, has vanished by now, together with its hidden Caritas Romana implication.