Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)
ANDRÁS FÁY - MIKLÓS GÁLOS: The Restoration of Maarten van Heemskerck's Budapest Lamentation Panel
wise gazing towards the centre, attest to the closeness of the composition. Nicodemus' hands holding the nails of the cross exactly fill the only possible place behind Joseph of Arimathaea's shoulders. The iconographie tradition also confirms the integrity of the composition. As opposed to the New York painting, with the frontal placement of Christ and its isocephalic composition reflecting Northern Italian influence, the Budapest work is more closely related to the Netherlandish traditions. Its connection to the right panel of Hugo van der Goes' diptych representing the Lamentation of Christ in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, is especially remarkable.-' Van der Goes included as many male and female figures as Heemskerck in the scene. He arranged the figures of the rendition, usually represented in horizontal format, in a vertical composition, and the half figures of the supporting characters only appear behind the protagonists. The chiastic, crowded composition, arranged along diagonals, seems to have served as a source of inspiration for Heemskerck's painting in Budapest. The correspondence of such motifs as the group of the Virgin falling forward and John holding her embraced from the back, and the figure of the holy woman wiping her tears away with her kerchief, also seem to reinforce the relatedness of the two paintings. As an incidental note, Van der Goes' Lamentation of Christ is unique in early Netherlandish painting. 24 The actuality of the painting in sixteenth century art is proved by its contemporary copies, including the one on copper, of good quality, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (fig. 7). 25 In his 1917 article, Baldass cited the Entombment in the Accademia Albertina, Torino, as being the closest analogy to the Budapest painting (fig. 8). 26 Grosshans also shared this view in his monograph. 2. The panel, which in size and format is similar to the Budapest picture, with the frontal placement of Christ, is more Italian in character than the Budapest painting; the grotto overgrown with ivy in the background, from where a vista opens up onto Golgotha, also differs from the homogeneous blue background of the Budapest painting. How r ever, the proportions of the figures, and the similarity of the faces, costumes and movements, all support the close relatedness of the two paintings. The characters of the scene —Christ, the Virgin, John, and Mary Magdalen —although their positioning is slightly different, are the same figures. The bearded Joseph of Arimathaea of the Budapest picture corresponds to the figure identified either as Joseph of Arimathaea or as Nicodemus in the Torino work. 2s In this composition he is shown bareheaded, but the characteristic turban of the figure in the Budapest panel appears on the head of one of the subsidiary figures in the background. The relatedness of the two paintings became even more conspicuous after the restoration work carried out by the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. The increasingly crowded placement
