Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

The relief-work which was awarded the prize set by the municipality for the purpose later to win a gold medal at the Paris World Fair of 1900 relates the events in a literary manner. Presented in the plaque is a meticulously-detailed background complete with the familiar outlines of the City Hall, the Piarist monastery, the inner-city church, and even the figure of Archduke Stephen in the company of some officers riding in a boat. The real drama unfolds in the foreground of the relief where the Baron, whose every feature is represented faithfully, is trying to keep his balance as he uses an oar to lift some desperate mothers - children clinging on to their necks - as well as some older men into the boat. The dynamic composition is dominated by the figure of the deluge boatman.

That the heroic epithet was permanently attached to the name of Wesselényi is largely due to Vörösmarty’s poem of the same title. Besides drawing the allegorical figure of a lady's flaming apparition expressing her gratitude to Wesselényi for his selfless deeds, the poem makes references to some concrete historical events, too. The poet pays homage to the greatness of the spirit of the politician who had been indicted for his part in publishing, without the

■ Barnabás Hollo's work on the Franciscan Church in Kossuth Lajos utca

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