Mikó Árpád szerk.: "Magnificat anima mea Dominum" M S Mester vizitáció-képe és egykori selmecbányai főoltára (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1997/1)

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - MIKÓ ÁRPÁD: Misztériumjáték. A táblák sorsa: források és feltevések

ÁRPÁD MIKÓ MYSTERY PLAYS THE FATE OF THE PANELS: SOURCES AND ASSUMPTIONS The first three panels to emerge from Master M S's oeuvre were the three pieces of his Passion series, all discovered in 1876. They were presented to the public during the first great historical exhibition in Budapest, organized to help the flood victims. They are unequivocally identified in the exhibition catalogue („three paintings, German school, scenes from the great Passion. M.S. 1506"); they were owned by the Koháry-Coburg family, whose residence was in Hontszentantal. The exhibition had extensive news coverage, yet the panels were nowhere mentioned. Our next information about the panels is from 1891. By that time the four Passion scenes were in the possession of the „primatical gallery" of Esztergom, acquired by Primate János Simor, a passionate art collector. In the catalogue published in 1891 (in fact only a frugally worded list of the artworks) only the signature is mentioned (construed as Shongauer's), not the date. The picture were then completely overpainted (without altering anything in the composition or the figures, as can be seen from a surviving photograph), but the date was effaced. The panels were cleaned by Sebestyén Endrődy in 1915, when the date of 1506 once again became visible. The panel Visitation was purchased by the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts in 1902. It was first published in 1906 by Kornél Divald, who recognized it as the work of the same master who had painted the Passion scenes held in Esztergom, announcing that the sixth panel, the Nativity, was hung up in the parish church of Hontszentantal. Divald wrote several articles about the origin of the paintings: he had good reason to assume that they - the dissembled parts of a huge winged altarpiece - were all taken from Selmecbánya (today Banská Stiavnica in Slovakia) to the neighbouring villages: to Tópatak (today Bansky Studenec in Slovakia) and Hontszentantal (today Antol in Slovakia). In 1916, Tibor Gerevich - using Divald'

s information - published the restored panels held in Esztergom; he even included the photographs of two of the panels. Very little was known about the provenience of the pictures. Visitation was originally discovered in the attic of the church of Tópatak. The church, which was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, was built in 1745 by the Jesuits. According to canonicae visitationes (1754, 1774, 1779,1811), it only had one altar, featuring two pictures: the Transfiguration of Christ and St. John the Baptist, respectively, and two sculptures: St. Isidor and St. Notburga. From the available sources the presence of the Visitation in the church cannot be established. Hontszentantal was always a larger settlement: in 1276 it already had a church. We know the name of the parish priest who resided there in 1455. According to the canonica visitatio of 1561, the parish priest was married and of the Lutheran confession. There were several canonicae visitationes on the church. According to the one filed in 1697, it had two more Mediaeval altars (the high altar featured, among others, the sculptures of the saint kings of Hungary: St. Stephen, St. Emeric, St. Ladislas) (note no. 40.). It appears that in 1713 the altars still looked more or less the same (note no. 4L). By 1731, however, there were some major changes: new sculptures were placed on the altars (note no. 42.). In 1754 the church already had three altars. The building collapsed in 1772, but two altars were later moved to the new church built in 1779 (canonica visitatio of 1779) (note no. 47.). By the early nineteenth century the Mediaeval sculptures all disappeared, perhaps with the exception of the - drastically re-carved - Madonna, which is still in the church today. Therefore, these sources do not confirm the presence of Master M S's panels in the church. There is a canonica visitatio dated from 1779, concerning the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary at Selmecbánya, in which mention is made of six large paintings near to the high altar (note no. 52.). These paintings disappeared after the fire of 1806, or at least this was what the canonica visitatio of 1829 claimed. Rather than being destroyed in the fire, they were probably moved from the church after its renovation, similarly to other objects. There is no mention of these large panels in the earlier canonicae visitationes. Apart from one interruption, the church was in the possession of the Jesuits between 1669 and 1773. In 1707 it had three main altars: the high altar was decorated with a single statue of the Crucifixion, which was probably a Mediaeval work, and so was the painting depicting the Mount of Olives, decorating one of the other altars (note no. 57.). In 1713 there were plans to raise another high altar; it was from that period that a memorandum mentioned