Hajós György: Heroes' Square - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)
on, the bone of contention being the question of just how many of the fourteen statues should feature Habsburg monarchs, and who precisely these should be. The list of names was altered several times (but five places were reserved for the House of Habsburg until after World War II). Creating the statues presented the artists with an unprecedented challenge. There were few public statues in Budapest at the time, and those that existed were mainly works of ecclesiastical themes made by stonecutters rather than true artists. The only examples the sculptors and architects had to draw on were works standing abroad, as the majority of fewer than a hundred and fifty sculptures kept in the city’s picture galleries were mostly plaster castings. Sculptors were mainly employed by Budapest’s increasingly wealthy citizenry, who commissioned works portraying themselves and their families. The domestic traditions behind the art of making monumental sculptures of historical motifs was scanty indeed. There were many sculptures and monuments unveiled in the year of the millennium across the country and about two hundred sculptors were busy working on these commissions. The new challenge gave Hungarian sculpture a new shape. The artists reached out for Baroque shapes to fit their historical themes. The philosophy of art represented by Royal statues awaiting reinstatement in 1919 24
