The Old Hungarian collection’s permanent exhibition can be viewed on the museum’s third and second floor. The exhibition encompasses the art of historical Hungary and its Central European connections from the early seventeenth century to 1800.
The rearranged permanent exhibition gives visitors an insight into the changes in the genre and style of painting and sculpture in Hungary over two hundred years, while placing it in a historical, cultural and geographic context. In order to provide a comprehensive presentation of the works and the wide-ranging artistic connections between the aristocracy and the archpriests of the time, the exhibition is supplemented with paintings and sculptures on loan from other Hungarian museums, church and private collections, as well as furniture and jewellery on loan from the Museum of Applied Arts and the Hungarian National Museum.
The exhibition is divided into thematic units, which give a selection of the collection’s rich variety of object types. The exhibition starts on the third floor of the museum, where monastic paintings, epitaphs and funerary statues represent the monuments of seventeenth-century ecclesiastical art and funerary cult. In a separate room off the corridor, one of the most spectacular parts of the Baroque collection is on display: eighteenth-century ecclesiastical painting and sculpture, with monumental works, represented by painted, gilded wooden sculptures and richly coloured altarpieces. The Italianate Viennese Baroque, which became established in the region, was brought to Hungary by Austrian, mainly Viennese, painters and sculptors, such as the brilliant fresco and altarpiece painter Franz Anton Maulbertsch, who created a significant part of his oeuvre for the Hungarian church.
The exhibition then continues half a floor down, with the first part of the new exhibition featuring works by Hungarian-born portrait painter Ádám Mányoki and still-life painter James Bogdány, who have had successful careers abroad. Here we present for the first time a new acquisition in the collection in 2024, a portrait by Ádám Mányoki of Agnieszka Emerencjana Pociejowa, the lady-in-waiting of Prince August II, whom Mányoki had the opportunity to portray as the Prince’s court painter.
In the following cabinet, examples from nearly two hundred years of Hungarian portrait painting are shown in a varied gallery of portraits: from representative status portraits of the 17th century to Enlightenment portraits emphasising the personality of the sitter, visitors can follow the changes and types of the most popular Baroque genre.
The Baroque sketch is a particularly attractive and characteristic genre of the period. The ‘small forms’ of the great altarpieces and frescoes are typically plans, preparatory sketches that often record the artist’s first thoughts and give an insight into the process of making a great work. Sketches are also largely used to illustrate the typical Hungarian themes of the second half of the 18th century, the cult of Mary, which has been alive since the Middle Ages, and the late Baroque versions of the veneration of the holy kings of the Árpád dynasty.
This portrait shows a lady of Polish origin dressed for riding a horse: she wears a wide-sleeved, collarless coat, waistcoat, and a tricorne hat. The ladies belonging to the court aristocracy often took part in the lords’ pastimes, for example hunting. The women’s clothing worn on such occasions was a paraphrase of men’s costumes. The coquettish, flaunty pose with the unbuttoned clothes and the pink ribbon refers to her position as a trusted confidant in the court of Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. Agnieszka Emerencjana had a close relationship with the monarch, with whom she tried to represent the interests of those close to her.
In the eighteenth century, aristocratic families sought to ensure opportunities for the education and cultural refinement of not only their sons but their daughters as well. A cultured woman was not only competent in writing, reading, and embroidery, but also possessed some drawing skills and was able to play one or more musical instruments. Erzsébet Haller’s portrait is part of a series which depicts aristocratic girls displaying appropriate social behaviour and the desired attributes of cultural refinement.
Ádám Mányoki is known primarily as a portrait painter. This still life is a unique piece in his oeuvre. The painter’s signature, complete with date and time of creation, was uncovered on the back of the work during the conservation process. It is possible that the reason the artist created this painting in Vienna in such a highly popular genre, because it was easy to sell and he needed to make ends meet. The “lopsidedness” of the composition suggests that this painting is one of a pair.
