CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2008
| Author | Sallay, Dóra |
|---|---|
| Title | Early Sienese Paintings in Hungarian Collections, 1420-1520 |
| Summary | The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and the Christian Museum in Esztergom – the two Hungarian museums that collect European old masters – conserve an unusually large number of Sienese paintings. This dissertation examines the most coherent group of works among these, those dating between about 1420 and 1520: thirty-three paintings that represent nearly all the known Sienese masters who were active during these hundred years. The chronological boundaries are those of the Sienese Quattrocento taken in a stylistic sense, and range from the activity of Sassetta, the first great master of the new style to masters like Bernardino Fungai and Girolamo di Benvenuto whose activity reaches into the Cinquecento but who never truly abandoned the artistic principles of the Quattrocento. Since the majority of the paintings now separated in the two museums originally formed part of the private collection of Bishop Arnold Ipolyi (1823-1886) – who in turn purchased nearly all of them from the painter and restorer Johann Anton Ramboux (1790-1866) – it seemed necessary to study together the works now in Budapest and Esztergom. A smaller number of paintings belonged to a hitherto unknown Roman collector, Canon Raffaele Bertinelli (1802-1878), whose gallery was purchased by Cardinal János Simor (1813-1891), the founder of the Christian Museum. The analysis of the influences on the collecting interests of these private owners throws light on important similarities and differences between them, especially as regards their attitudes to the Nazarene movement, Romanticism, and to the rise of interest in the art of the late Middle Ages. I studied the collection history of the works in Hungary in the wider context of the reception history and historiography of early Sienese art. Sienese Quattrocento painting raised general interest among art historians only in recent decades, which brought to light a great amount of new information. The main purpose of this dissertation was to study the previously little researched works in Hungary in the light of these new results. Besides relying on the traditional methods of art history, I placed special emphasis on a methodology that too is rather recent but is indispensable for the understanding of these panel paintings that are mostly fragments of larger structures. Every work has been subjected to a detailed technical examination and interpreted in the light of fully or partially surviving larger structures, mainly altarpieces. This approach brought unexpected new results in the majority of cases about the original context and function of the pieces. |
| Supervisor | Klaniczay, Gábor; Tátrai, Vilmos; Loseries, Wolfgang |
| Department | Medieval Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2008/mphsad01.pdf |
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