Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)

ROOM 15. Education, Science and Culture at the End of the 19th Century (Katalin Körmöczi - Eszter Aczél - Annamária T. Németh - Edit Haider)

century, there are wreaths honouring Ferenc Liszt, Mór Jókai, Róza Laborfalvy and Ferenc Pulszky. These came to the Hungarian National Museum either by way of bequests or through direct donation. In the staging of relic exhibitions and in displaying so-called historical paintings, the National Museum played a leading role. It presented material associated with outstanding contemporaries, as well as with the events and the leading personalities of distant times. Mementos of Ferenc Liszt were shown as early as 1874, while the furniture and fittings of Ferenc Deák's last room were exhibited in 1880. ARTISTIC CRAFTS AND MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY Relics of the applied arts are shown according to theme, without regard for chronological order, and span the entire 19th century. Goldsmith s art is the genre in which we can follow the dichotomy which existed between the stylistic identity of items for use and the ideological content of art works. There was no goldsmith whose work better reflected the contradictions of the age than József Szentpétery (1781-1862). He began his career as a craftsman, albeit in the most prestigious of the crafts, goldsmith's work, but saw himself as being on an equal footing with the best artists of the day. He had reason to do this: József Szentpétery was the goldsmith of National Romanticism. Ágoston Kubinyi, the director of the Hungarian National Museum, asked the important artists of the age to write their autobiographies. Of those requested, only the "autobiographies" of Barabás and Szentpétery are known. Szentpétery was born in Rimaszombat (Rimavska Sobota) in 1781, and studied goldsmith's work in Kassa (Kosice) and Lőcse (Levoca). Later, in 1811, he was admitted to the goldsmith's guild in Pest, but because of difficult financial circumstances lived in Losonc (Lucenec) from 1812 until 1818. In 1818, he returned to Pest, and up until his death served the glory of the nation with his every work. He produced varied works of different kinds: tankards, goblets, items for household use, accessories for dress, sports prizes and items for the Reformed and Roman Catholic Churches. In his works in relief, he portrayed miraculous battles, human endeavours and initiatives. In the 1850s, the elderly master turned to Hungarian historical themes: "Those who visited me always asked me to do a Hungarian historical piece... One of them depicts the story of Maria Theresia, when she commends the Emperor Joseph, still a small child, to the Hungarians; the second shows the taking of Buda Castle from the Turks (the recapture of Buda). I offered these two pieces to the Directorate of the Hungarian National Museum, and they were accepted..." - extract from Szentpétery's autobiography (Fig. 65). In the new economic configuration of the 18th century, the market-towns lost their earlier economic and intellectual role, and goldsmith's work in these settlements went into decline. The significance of the Transylvanian and Upper Hungarian towns also decreased. On the other hand, the number of goldsmiths in Győr, Sopron, Pozsony (Bratislava), Buda and Pest increased by leaps and bounds in the 19th century. More and more worked in Pest, which was undergoing bourgeois transformation.