Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
NEW PUBLICATIONS - EDITORIAL BOARD: Éva Nyerges, Spanish Paintings. The Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
NEW PUBLICATIONS ÉVA NYERGES. SPANISH PAINTINGS / THE COLLECTIONS OF THE MUSEUM OF EINE ARTS. BUDAPEST. VOL. I. BUDAPEST 2008. ENGLISH TEXT. 233 PP., 97 COL. PES. AND 21 COL. ILLS.. ISBN 978 963 7063 47 3. ISSN 1416-3896 The series introducing the collections preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts was launched in 1996 with the Hungarian and Spanish language volume entitled Old Spanish Paintings. In the meantime, the series had expanded to six volumes, all of which were also published in English. An English language volume about the museum's Spanish collection therefore seemed timely, a decision confirmed by the significant augmentation of the collection in the past decade through purchases and in some cases as a result of new attributions of paintings that had been identified in the museum's core collection as belonging to different schools, and which have now been transferred by Eva Nyerges to the Spanish collection, comprising of some one hundred and twenty works. The Spanish school in the museum's old masters' paintings excels not because of the number of works it holds, since the Italian and the Dutch schools are far more extensive, but because it contains works —in many cases masterpieces —by the most important Spanish masters of five centuries. Examples include Entombment by Pedro Sanchez, The Penitent Mary Magdalene by El Greco, The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew by Ribera and The Infant Jesus Distributing Bread to the Pilgrims by Murillo. The paintings in the Spanish collection, especially the Baroque works, come from the Esterházy Collection, as does the core collection of the Old Masters' Gallery. These paintings, which were brought to the attention of Francis II, emperor of Germany and Austria, by the son of Miklós (Nicholas) Esterházy II, Prince Pál Antal, embassador to London, had originated from the collection of Edmund Burke, the Danish embassador to Madrid. The emperor did not wish to purchase the collection comprising of mostly Madrid paintings for the Viennese court —a recent finding by the research of Klára Garas—; thus, Prince Miklós was able to purchase one part of it in London between 1819 and 1821, and the other after Burke's death, from his widow in Paris. At the same time, on the advice of Joseph Fischer, the director of the Esterházy Gallery and a man of excellent taste, the gallery managed to acquire additional prominent pictures —including Goya's masterpieces, The Knife-grinder and the Water-carrier —in 1820 and 1822, at the auctions of the collection of Prince Kaunitz. This purchase was made during Goya's lifetime, far sooner than similar purchases by any European Goya collector.
