Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)

Sinkó Katalin: Az alapítók biblikus képei és a századvég antihistorizmusa

in a new context. The painting, which measures almost ten metres, shows the opposition of antiquity and Christianity. The crucified Christ with the figure of Venus is represented on Beethoven's Promethean statue in a similar sense, expressing the idea that spiritual suffering is the fate shared by every genius. By contrast, Venus symbolizes the invincible source of his genius: the desire for beauty. Renate Liebenwein-Kramer describes the mixing of pagan and Christian iconographical elements on the Beethoven monument as one of the final developments in the secularization of Christian pictorial forms. She discusses Klinger's above-mentioned works among the list of works in which the secularization of religious pictorial forms could be best apprehended. However, Liebenwein-Kramer regards sacralization as a parallel process of secularization. The heroes and persons belonging to the profane world acquire a peculiar aura of sacralization. One of the objects of sacralization at the turn of the century was the person of the artist, or in a broader sense, art itself. In his Beethoven monument, Klinger represents the "quasi-saintly" character of the genius. The Hungarian painters arriving in Nagybánya in 1896 saw nothing strange in these practices of secularizing religion, as they had witnessed several examples of it both in Munich and in Paris. THE BIBLICAL PAINTINGS OF THE NAGYBÁNYA MASTERS, 1896-1903 Having settled in the art colony, in 1896-1897 the Nagybánya artists produced three paintings which could rightly be called programme pictures. Through these paintings, the artists wished to express their belief in a shared artistic ideal. The three paintings, which were completed nearly at the same time, are also similar in that they are all much larger than a typical genre painting or a landscape, thus lending greater emphasis to the significance of the works. Ferenczy began to work on his composition entitled The Sermon on the Mount first. The version which was meant to be the final one, but which was later cut up by Marcell Nemes, was completed in 1897. János Thorma's work entitled "Pax Vobiscum!" was completed in the same year. István Csók painted his God Bless You My Love in Nagybánya one year later. (This painting has since been destroyed.) The above-mentioned works of Ferenczy, Thorma and Csók testify to the shared ethos and also to the modern concept of art they discovered. The primary subjects of the paintings, the religious themes (Mount Sermon, Christ's appearance to his disciples, etc.), form nothing more than the pretext for the Nagybánya painters' artistic concept (called "religiosus" by Lyka). János Thorma's "Pax Vobiscum!" shows the resurrected Christ among his disciples. The painting could be interpreted on two levels: in accordance with the traditional, Biblical interpretation, and also in reference to Hollósy's prophetic role, the relationship between disciples and the master, the mission received from him. According to Réti, "in the composition of Christ's figure, Thorma's imagination digressed from the traditional types: he used Hollósy as his model. It was a brave and original idea, and intellectually it befitted the respect the first Nagybánya generation felt for Hollósy: Christ's figure idealized from the worshipped master of suggestive power." (Réti 1994, 98.) "Pax Vobiscum!" was completed after Thorma's study trip in the Netherlands, and it testifies to the influence of Rembrandt and the German masters of Hellmalerei, including Fritz von Uhde. For the Nagybánya artists, the Biblical scene of sending off the disciples expressed the artist's missionary fate: the role of the artist as a prophet. For this reason, this theme was also depicted by other artists, including István Réti, who made several versions of it. In the first version, which showed Christ and the disciples sitting around a table, the artist modelled his Jesus-representation on Károly Ferenczy's facial features. In the later versions of the composition the moment of the send-off was given greater emphasis; later, he also painted an outdoor version of the scene. This Biblical theme captured the attention of Béla Iványi Griinwald also, who used the scene of "Pax Vobiscum!" in his altar painting made in 1903, and again in the 1920s. The artists' group presented as a Biblical community also forms the theme of Károly Ferenczy's painting. Jesus, the wandering preacher, is shown seated on the hillside of Nagybánya, surrounded by the painters and their family, as well as by the Romanian peasants of Nagybánya, the Roman shepherd symbolizing Antiquity and the knight in armour symbolizing the Mediaeval. The inclusion of these latter figures in the composition indicates that by 1896 Ferenczy had definitely turned his back on the principles of Historicism. Similarly to Fritz von Uhde's composition The Sermon on the Mount, Ferenczy painted Jesus not as a character from an ancient story, but as someone living in the contemporary world. However, unlike Uhde, Ferenczy broadened the living world of today to also include the non-divine representatives of the past (the Mediaeval knight and the Roman shepherd). Ferenczy's method could be called anti-Historicism, thus expressing the painter's modern conception of time. The Biblical paintings Ferenczy executed between 1896 and 1903 are parables on the existential situation of man and on the fate designated to artists. In his work entitled Abraham's Sacrifice, Ferenczy represents the drama of the essential absurdity of faith, as also described by Kierkegaard. In his large canvas showing Joseph and his brothers, Ferenczy portrays the inevitable conflict between a man cursed with dreams - the artist - and the insensitive multitude around him. In his Removal from the Cross, painted in 1903, Ferenczy places the familiar scene in the scenery of the Nagybánya hills, strongly lit by the lights of dusk. A strange duality characterizes the picture, which results from the realistic presentation on the one hand, and