Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

NEW ACQUISITIONS, NEW RESULTS - Bernadett GASSAMA-SZABÓ: Ignác Roskovics and the St. Stephen's Room in the Buda Palace

BERNADETT GASSAMA-SZABÓ Ignác Roskovics and the St. Stephen's Room in the Buda Palace Ignác Roskovics (1854-1915) was commissioned to decorate the St. Stephen's Room of the Royal Palace already as an acknowledged artist. He had completed a variety of a ecclesiastic and lay commissions beforehand, which had contributed to his winning this prestigious and vast job. He had a thorough education both at home, his father being an erudite dean in Hajdúdorog, and at school, having had well-known artist teachers who discovered his graphic talents.

1 He enrolled in the Drawing Teachers' Training College in 1875, and then, having been granted the art scholarship founded by Lajos Hajnald, archbishop of Kalocsa,

2 he studied at the Munich Academy of Arts from 1880. From then on, he regularly and often successfully participated at the annual Ecclesiastical Painting Competition. He distinguished himself with his "individual way of seeing", and thus obtained several church commissions.

3 Returning from his studies in Rome in 1888, he settled down in Ungvár, there he taught drawing for a short while, and then moving to Budapest won a 600-florin prize from the Fine Arts Association. As a result, he came to be known not only in ecclesiastic circles, but throughout the country. He painted a significant body of conversation pieces between 1885 and 1900, but did not neglect to work on religious themes, producing seven wall paintings and three altar pictures in the Szina church, and decorating the Budapest Józsefváros church with his wall paintings. He displayed a historical piece entitled The Union of Transylvania at the 1896 millennial exhibition, in the wake of which he received the commission to paint to the St. Stephen's Room of the Buda Castle. In the course of extending the Buda Castle under the architect Alajos Hauszmann, several medium-size rooms were built. In the wing facing Krisztinaváros, two rooms (the St. Stephen and the King Matthias rooms) were furnished particularly lavishly and artistically.

4 From the autobiography of Alajos Hauszmann, we know that the Hungarian State Treasury advanced the funds needed for the construction to the court. The estimated amount necessary was reported at the beginning of the year, which the Ministry of Finance made immediately payable in full to the Palace Construction Committee. The Committee deposited the money at the Hungarian Mortgage Bank, and it was from the interest on these amounts that the making of artworks for the palace was financed. According to the account of Alajos Hauszmann, almost a million and a half crowns were thus accumulated for executing painterly and sculptural works between 1899 and 1900.

5 This was how Károly Lötz was commissioned to paint the Habs1. The St. Stephen's Room in the Buda Royal Palace. Reproduced from: Magyarország a párisi világkiállításon 1900. Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor es. és kir. udv. könyvnyomdája, 1901, p. 70 burg Room, Árpád Feszty the Buffet Gallery, Gyula Benczúr the Matthias Room, and Ignác Roskovics the St. Stephen's Room. In 1897, prime-minister Dezső Bánffy submitted a proposal to Franz Joseph on the decoration of the St. Stephen's Room, determining that its should be executed in a Romanizing style. Hauszmann deemed it important that the forms copied from Romanesque monuments should be pieced out with folk-art elements, for "we chose not only stern and rigid Romanesque shapes, but also provided room for Hungarian ornamentation, thus the Hungarian character was given expression."

6 The wainscots of the room were produced by the cabinetmaker Endre Thék, and Ignác Roskovics first painted life-size oils of the rulers and saints from the Flouse of Árpád, which were then reproduced in porcelain faience at the Zsolnay Factory in Pécs.

7 (111. 1) Roskovics began to work out his themes with great circumspection. He paid particular attention to historical authenticity, and so he studied the antiquities of the period he was to depict: the arms, jewels, applied-art remains, carpets, draperies the Archaeological Department of the National Museum preserved from the Árpád age (1000-1301).

8 He was so successful in his investigations for creating a historically faithful atmosphere for his fig-