Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)

ANDRÁS FÁY - MIKLÓS GÁLOS: The Restoration of Maarten van Heemskerck's Budapest Lamentation Panel

THE RESTORATION OF MAARTEN VAN HEEMSKERCK'S BUDAPEST LAMENTATION PANEL ANDRÁS FAY AND MIKLÓS GALOS Maarten van Heemskerck's panel depicting the Lamentation of the Dead Christ is the master's only painting in Hungary (fig. I).

1 It entered the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1916 as a donation by Marcell Nemes, its history prior to this is unknown. The Archives of the Museum of Fine Arts have preserved Marcell Nemes' letter regarding the presentation, but the laconic document contains nothing about the origin of the work.- Its English provenance that subsequently surfaced in literature was first mentioned in Gábor Térey's catalogue of 1924, which is perhaps a reference to an oral communication by the donor, Marcell Nemes.' Alarcell Nemes donated the painting as a work by Heemskerck. Although the picture had not yet been included in Preibisz' groundbreaking monograph published in 1911, all of the publications introducing the work as the museum's new acquisition nevertheless presented it as Heemskerck's work.

4 In regard to its dating, it was generally held that Heemskerck produced it after his Roman sojourn. In his work surveying the complete œuvre of the master with the thoroughness of a modern monograph, Rainald Grosshans published the painting among the painter's autograph works, and his proposal for it to be dated around 1540 can be regarded as generally accepted.' At the same time, Grosshans rightly called attention to the poor state of the painting's preservation, pointing out the extensive retouches covering the joins of the panel, and the faces as well as the entire background. Zsuzsa Urbach, who dealt with the work in her capacity as the curator of the Netherlandish paintings of the Old Masters' Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, came to the same conclusion/' It was the phototechnical examination of the painting that provided the decisive impetus to commence restoration work. As part of the co-operation between the Museum of Fine Arts,