The Painter and his Patron. Josef Danhauser and János László Pyrker

In 1836, Archbishop János László Pyrker of Eger donated to the nation his collection of paintings, mostly by Italian masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which he had previously purchased as Patriarch of Venice. The Italian masterpieces in the series of 190 works are relatively well-known, and the finest of them are on permanent exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Less well-known is the fact that the Pyrker collection also includes some nineteenth century works, most notably the five paintings commissioned from the young Josef Danhauser by Pyrker, who was Patriarch of Venice at the time.

Although Pyrker had a distinguished career as a high-ranking ecclesiastical dignitary and was a prominent art collector and patron of the arts, we may also remember him for his significant literary work.

The exhibition presents Pyrker’s epic poem Rudolf von Habsburg, published in Vienna in 1825, and the accompanying illustrations by Biedermeier painter Josef Danhauser. The author dedicated his epic to the glorification of the Austrian Emperor Franz I and the House of Habsburg. In it, he elaborates the legendary story of the Habsburg founding father, the basis of the legitimisation of the centuries-old Habsburg dynasty.

This epic, consisting of 12 cantos in dactylic hexameter, concerns the causes and events of the battle of Dürnkrut (also known as the Battle on the Marchfeld) in 1278 between the Bohemian king Přemysl Ottokar II (r. 1253–1278) and the German king Rudolf Habsburg (r. 1273–1291). The titular character defeats Ottokar’s armies, consolidates his realm and establishes his ruling house. The first three paintings were presented at the Vienna Academy in 1826. Encouraged by the success of these works, Pyrker asked the painter to create more illustrations, so two more works were created by 1832. The images follow the text of the epic so closely that the context of the work is necessary for their interpretation, therefore they are presented not in the order in which they were painted, but in the order of the events of the epic.

The curator of the exhibition: Dóra Lovas

FOCUS

The FOCUS exhibition space is a regularly renewed addition to the permanent exhibition From Courbet to Baselitz. Hosting a variety of temporary shows, it presents cabinet exhibitions examining various aspects of the collection of the Collection of International Art after 1800, as well as other special projects: new acqui­sitions, thematic displays and exhibitions with a new, original focus await visitors.